Growing my Real Estate perspective

[Edward Z.]

My name is Edward. I live in San Antonio Texas. I have fully committed to learning all I can about Real Estate Investing and Property Management. I have dedicated time to listen and take notes on the suggested books on BP. While it makes me excited and confident to know that some members have made their start exactly where I decided to start. I want to ask my fellow BP members whether it would be beneficial to work for an already practicing RE Investor with their 80/20 work while I build a little bit more capital to fund my first investment property or to work for a Property Management company to build a professional presence and understanding of being a Property Manager. I feel like knowing what the skills and characteristics of a good and bad manager are will help me in the future to understand how I will run my properties. If there is another direction I should go in to help me get closer to achieving my goal of owning property then I would greatly appreciate some suggestions.

[Joseph Cacciapaglia]

I think you may want to consider getting your license and working as an agent. If you focus on only working with investors, you'll be in a position to learn a lot from them, but you'll also be able to make decent money at the same time. I've learned more about real estate investing from my successful clients than I ever did while working as an employee for large investment and development companies.

Also, the good property managment companies are organized with departments (leasing, accounting/collections, maintnance, bizdev, etc.), so there is no one job you can get that will really teach you everything about property mangement. I don't think there is as much value for working for one as you might think.

Another option would be to work in construction, if you can somehow get involved in the estimate/quote process. Understanding the costs involved with maintenance and renovations is one of the areas where I see a lot of new investors really struggle.