Personalized Advice

[Shane Maynard]

Great forum guys really excited to be a part of it.

I have been reading about Real Estate Investing for about 5 hours a day for a month now. Thus I am pointing out that I am very inexperienced. However, being raised in the countries poorest region "Appalachia" I can honestly say that I have not had very good mentoring when it comes to investing.

A few years ago I move to Lexington, Kentucky where I now attend University and am finally completing my undergrad degree in Computer Engineering. My fiance and I have just bought our first house ("As of a month ago"), though the processes was difficult I found it fun and opened my eyes to the possibility of real estate.

Now my fiance and I are talking about building wealth, and have been reading about buy-and-holds along with learning about property management. But being so inexperienced has lead to a lot of questions.

First, when we were buying the home I ran into a Debt to Income issue. I have had a stable job as a Network Administrator for 10 years, the pay is not great but it has kept me going with a little savings. I had a auto loan, but by selling my car (1 of 3) I was able to pay down that debt and buy the house (My fiance doesn't work, she is just a student). Really, the only loans I have are bout 30,000 in student loans which are still differed until I graduate. But it was enough, including the auto loan to barely push be over the threshold. With that said, I am having difficulty thinking of ways to fund our first investment property. I know the bank will not give me a loan now that I bought my home. I don't have any connections to potential partners, all of my family and friends are not the wealthiest of people and private money will be hard to find because of my inexperience. What could be some other avenues?

I understand that if I have more capital for say a 25% or more down payment this may not be such an obstacle. So my next question is, aside from relying purely on savings from my 9-5 (which would take years to get a reasonable down-payment saved up), what avenues should I explore such as wholesaling or lean-buying that could help me gain additional capital. Especially something that would not take too long or too much capital to start in (lets say the next 3-6 months). Not looking for a get-rich-quick just to help boost my next investment.

Thanks for reading my long winded request!