Don’t know where to start or what to ask

[Jake Peters]

Hello, I am a 25 year old living in NH who recently started talking about purchasing a multifamily home with my partner. We are looking to live in one unit and rent out the other. I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the real-estate world and don’t really know what questions I should be asking. Any bit of advice of how to start my education process and basics I should be learning would be very helpful. 

[Manny Vasquez]

Jake - Welcome to the BP community! This is the best place for all things real estate related. This is what I recommend for you to get started in your real estate journey:

1. Keep saving as much as you can. Depending how much you earn you can step up those savings by getting a side-hustle. It could be any side-hustle you want just as long as you like it and your able to save some extra $$$.

2. Read as many RE books as you can get your hands on. Here are a few I recommend: "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Roberto Kiyosaki; "Set for Life" by Scott Trench; "The Unofficial Guide to Real Estate Investing" by Spencer; "The BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginners Guide" found here on BP; "The Book on Rental Property Investing" by Brandon Tuner. This will give you a good starting point.

3. Buy a property as soon as you can. The earlier you start in your RE journey, the better off you will be in the future. Almost everyone here on BP will tell you that they wish they had started earlier, myself included.

4. House-hack, house-hack, house-hack. This will give you several benefits. The most obvious is that you will be able to offset your mortgage with renting out a few rooms. You will then have a few options with that rent money....you can put it into principal or you can start saving it to purchase yet another property. House hacking will also give you some personal "property management" experience. This will come in handy as you begin to scale.

5. Decide which game you want to play. Do you want to be a house flipper? BRRRR? General Contractor? Buy and Hold? Do you want to LTR, MTR, or STR? Or maybe you want to do a combination of the above?

6. Attend meetups and meet as many people in RE as you can. You will meet people from different walks of life that will give you different perspectives on real estate investing. You might also meet someone that could be a potential business partner. Or you could buy a property from another person at the meetup. Keep an open mind and try to meet everyone at these meetings. I've developed some great relationships and also a business partner from these meetings. As they say, your network will be your net-worth.

7. Timing the market does not work. However, time in the market makes all the difference in the world!

8. Take Action! None of the above works unless you take action and put it into practice. Don't wait for the perfect deal to come up, the most important thing is to get started. Just like everything else in life, get started, keep honing those skills (i.e. keep reading, keep learning, keep attending the meetups) and watch yourself get better and better witch each property you buy.

I hope this helps and good luck on your real estate journey!