New to REI in MA/RI looking for advice

[Andrew Sprague]

Hey Everyone,

I am a rising Senior finance, management and MIS major looking to jump into REI full time as soon as possible. I am 10 hours from finishing my RE license training, looking to take the test in August. I have been researching rental property investing for about 2 years now as I've been saving and earning my degree and I'm getting ready to make my first move in the Providence area or the Greater Boston area. I've built my credit to foster the best interest rates and qualifications for loans and my student debt is fairly low (<20k). In the short term I hope to buy a multi family or SFR, most likely an owner occupant agreement, within the next 12 months. I still have 2 semesters left but with COVID it could hopefully be less. In the long term I want to own multiple properties and get to the point where I can save up enough money from rentals/flips to get into self storage and commercial properties. Since most of my research and knowledge has been on my own time I want to reach out and see if there is anyone who would like to connect and tell me about their experiences with analyzing the market, running estimates and calculations, and scaling up. Any advice, replies, or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Anthony Thompson]

@Andrew Sprague welcome to Bigger Pockets! It sounds like you have a pretty good foundation to start with and I'd be happy to connect as you said.

If your main goal is to connect with others right now then I'd also recommend attending local real estate groups such as Black Diamond REI in Burlington and Worcester, or the RI real estate investors group in RI. I've attended both groups and found them to be great for networking and education.

Michael raises a good point about starting out where you'd like to eventually be, but I will make an exception and that's "house hacking" or living in a multifamily building yourself and renting out the other units.

With that, you get great owner-occupied financing terms and you get to start to learn about real estate. It might not be self storage or commercial but I do think it's a good way to get your first real estate asset and learn about tenants. (Commercial tenants are usually easier to deal with but you can have long vacancies - and self-storage is its own specialty as Michael mentioned.)

One minor note: You mentioned still having student loans, and I heard a podcast recently which said that if you can still afford to make your payments, any payments will go 100% to principal between now and September. So that's really a powerful way to work on that balance if you're able to, especially as several investors I know are waiting to see what the economic fallout of Covid-19 will be for real estate.

For example, it's possible we could have a wave of foreclosures that would affect values of other properties. It might not happen, but while I still know people who are buying, I also know other experienced investors (especially hard money lenders) who are pulling back right now and taking a wait-and-see approach.

So it's worth considering an aspect of the same, at least as far as pure investment properties go. If you need to change your living situation though, I think house hacking is a special case and as long as you can afford the property, is probably fine to do any time. It's a great way to start in the Real World school of real estate :)