18 Year Old Investor Needing Advice

[PJ Pahygiannis]

My name is PJ Pahygiannis and I was wondering if you could give me some advice on getting started in buying real estate to rent for cash flow. I live a half an hour outside of Washington DC and LOVE investing. I'm 18 years old and will be a freshman in college in the fall. I've analyzed about 8 properties so far, a couple are near me, but the rest are in Ocean City about 2 hours away. I'm pretty sure I could make $7,000 for a down payment in about 2.5 months (I'm a writer and get $50 an article, I can easily write 2 articles a day. Any tips? My parents really don't know anything about real estate, and I think it scares them a little. I've learned a lot about cash flow/real estate from Robert Kiyosaki.

Thanks,
PJ

[Dawn Anastasi]

It's great you want to get started so young. Some advice:

1. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. Here you say you are "pretty sure" you'd have $7,000 in about 2.5 months. Right now, look at properties, but make sure you actually have money before envisoning investing it.

2. Make sure you not only have a down payment, but adequate reserves. If something goes wrong with the property (and the "if" really means "when") you need to make sure that you have money and are not scrambling and in a mess of a time. You don't want to have to ask your parents to bail you out.

3. Read all you can on the site. Listen to the podcasts as they contain a wealth of information.

4. Find out what your credit score is and work keep it up or increase it.

5. Determine what you would be pre-qualified for regarding a mortgage once you have your down payment and reserve money.