Newbie with No Money

[Dillon Dembowski]

Hi there!

I’m a 20 y/o college student from Oklahoma, and within this past year I’ve consumed real estate knowledge like my life depended on it. I absolutely love all the BP podcasts, spend hours reading blogs and articles, and have watched countless videos. However, there’s still a few questions that are specific to me that make me hesitant to jump into RE investing, even though I’m very passionate about the subject.

1. As I stated above, I'm a college student with a part-time job that doesn't pay near enough for a 20% down-payment on ANYTHING, so an owner-occupied prop. with a 0-3.5% DP (such as a house-hack) makes sense. However, I need to stay in my current town for school, and it's difficult to find any small multi-family deals in my area. Should I go off market? Wait for a market crash? Buy at retail price? Borrow from a lender and then try to refi, like a "live-and-BRRRR"?

2. I feel like I have lots of book knowledge on RE, but I have close to no practical knowledge or field experience. How could I go about finding a mentor that I could work under for a time? I’m willing to help them out in any RE related field for completely free, as long as I’m learning. 

3. I’m currently studying for a business degree in college, but obviously real estate is where my passion lies, and my ultimate goal is to make it my full-time job. I’d love to eventually run my own rental property business, even though that seems like a lofty dream considering I currently have zero units. I’ve considered pursuing a RE agent license, and I could either do that instead of school or after I finish school. I figure being a licensed agent could be a good “in” for the RE space. I also don’t think I’d be a bad agent at all, and the entrepreneurial aspect (scalability, no boss, high commission, hard work=better pay) all appeals to me. Is it worth it to get my RE license at all? And if so, should I do so sooner or later?

Thank you all for reading this post, I appreciate your time!