My Story as a Beginner: First 6 Months to 2 Properties!

[Adrien Salvador]

Hello everybody! Let me first introduce myself... My name is Adrien Salvador and I declared that I will purchase a home with the intention of house hacking in 6 months when I turned 23! When I decided to write this on a piece of post-it notes attached on the back of my phone covered by my clear case so that I can look at it every day... I did not know which steps I had to take in order to get there. All I knew was that that was the beginning of my day as a sponge; I absorbed every knowledge I could get from people I've met here in Biggerpockets and through the amazing books and podcast that this site provided. At the time, I didn't even have the down payment to get this house! I wanted to say that I am an option trader myself who wasn't very successful and was failing for 8 months straight. When 2020 began, my option trading took a turn and when everything came crashing down I've managed to ride the wave all the way down with a load of put options thanks to my mentor "TheTradingFraternity" on YouTube. While you can call that lucky, I call it faith. Going into 2020, I really thought this was my year. Hell, it was even the "Year of the Rat" and as a Filipino who grew up in Philippines... Chinese Culture has pretty much stuck to me because we heavily believe in it as well...

My background... I am one of three boys raised by a single mother who works 16-20 hours a day in 2-3 different hospitals varying on the day of the week. For many years, it hurt seeing my mother go through this type of hardship and not knowing how I can help her, but go to college... get a degree.. get a full-time job..(which I proudly accomplished with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering). I knew it wouldn't be enough that's why I've began to search for better answers! Thankfully I wasn't alone because my brothers were just as passionate about it as much as I was!

Come April, I've managed to get something under contract with the help of some amazing people who helped me find a great house hack deal! This past tuesday, I've managed to close on the property (Yes, we were on escrow for 2 months due to some problems rising because of Covid-19).

As I'm typing this, I still can't believe that I've managed to achieve the goals I have visualized in my head. Right now, I am proud to say that me and my brothers are under contract on our first BRRRR(or flip) property which we are on schedule to closing this month. We couldn't have found this great deal if it wasn't for our mentor and partner who owns 90 properties himself. My brothers and I managed to raise $42,150 in 4 weeks from friends and family who are now acting as our private investors!

If you've made it this far, I've got one thing to say. I AM EXTREMELY GRATEFUL FOR THE BLESSINGS THAT WE ARE EXPERIENCING. We are one step closer to our goals. We've just got to keep pushing and keep raising capital, buy more properties and make sure that everyone is taken care of.

I love real estate, man... I truly enjoy this... I haven't felt this much passion and joy for any profession that I've worked on. Thank you to the Biggerpockets community and to the universe for showing me this path. Much love everybody.

I leave you with one thing! We are continuously looking for investors/loaners to invest with us through real estate for a 10-12% interest on your investments! Contact me if you've got any other questions! We're looking to grow our portfolio with the help of our veteran partner to 20 properties in the next 2 years! At 21, 23 & 26, we are so excited to be in this journey together! 

[Erik W.]

@Adrien Salvador, hi and welcome to BP!

Glad to see you making a start on your goals.  A few thoughts...

1) You have an interesting, but not exceptional, start up story.  A house hack plus getting a property under contract that hasn't even closed yet.  This is not sufficient history of achievement in an industry like real estate investing to bring other private money investors to lend you money.

2) What are your cash flow numbers like? My guess is based on a house hack you're flowing negative but saving expenses. Okay, fair enough. But what would your cash flow be like if that unit were rented? That will tell us whether or not you were savvy enough to get a good purchase the first time and how this BRRRR might work out if it closes.

3) What are your plans for this BRRRR? What's your estimated "all in" costs? What with the ARV be? How will you determine ARV? Are you keeping it, flipping it, etc? What's your plan?

4) I can't speak for all investors obviously, but "down in the weeds" numbers are kind of odds.  How and why did you raise $42,150?  I mean, did someone offer to give you only $150?  That's an odd ball number.  A wise, very seasoned investor told me once to drop the cents off all my calculations.  He said, "Mr. Whiting, I'm glad to see you are thorough with your projection, but I don't care about see the decimal points on your expenses of $8,794.42 on a million dollar property.  Round it off to $8,800 and call it good."  Not an exact quote, but something to that effect.  His point is you can fail to see the forest for the trees.  Hire a bean counter to worry about the precise amounts.  You concern yourself with the big picture.  I would have been more impressed if you'd said you raised $40,000 even though that amount is lower.  It tells me you are approaching the right kind of investors vs. spending your time on people who only have $150 to $2,000 to invest, which isn't enough if you plan on scaling this out at all.

Not beating you up.  I'm telling you that you'll need to work a little harder at showing us actual numbers and how you're presenting yourself as a professional investor who is concerned with ensuring his private investors are keeping principle secure and generating a good return for them vs. gushing about how much you personally love real estate.  Enthusiasm is fine and needed, but actual dollar returns are the key.