Diary of my first step: Jersey City NJ Multi-Family- No experience, no idea what i'm doing, no regrets

[Sunny Suh]

Hello everyone, 

Complete noob here. I started investing in a set it and forget it type stock/index portfolio and it has done well. Had to do a lot of research.

Now I am jumping in real estate, going for that multiple streams of income, I'll probably make a lot of stupid errors, hope some of you find it amusing, but just want to help others. 

Biggest theme I have seen is across any endeavor is just get started, probably the hardest step and now time to get on moving~

Initial strategy was to buy a MF house, but after realizing the places we want to live are costly, decided the new strategy will be to buy our primary condo, then leverage the equity in that to buy a second house as a multi-family. 

Journey started roughly two weeks ago, after months of looking on zillow. We came across a beautiful 1 bed 2 bath for 355k, until we realized after the first showing that it's a duplex split between a basement and ground floor, where the toilets were flooded from hurricane sandy hence the new tile flooring. Real estate lady was using mind games to get us to buy a pricier house, i just nodded my head and played stupid.

Decided to go with the mortgage person that works with her, got a pre-approval without sending any documents? Weird, anyway, continuing to work with her to see what rate she can get me. 

Checked out another house but not really a fan of this mom-like lady who clearly is green-eyed and money hungry, talking about her greedy associates. You are who you hang out with, so decided to definitely not work with her. Nor was she investor friendly.

Came across another guy on this site, he showed us the first place that was a 1 bedroom, 1bath from 249k, and was honest! Also he's investor friendly, prompt with messages, and so glad I found him. He's also a 29 year old dude, so that is cool.  A property manager as well, so I felt safe with the guy. 

He recommended an attorney and mortgage guy, so now I just finished submitting all the paperwork( so much freakin paperwork. all my bank statements, 2 years of W-2, IRS, passport photo, driver's license photo, i was a bit slow with this and took me over a week). waiting to hear back, see what my max on my pre-approval is. 

We will be looking at another house, the next one we was was a foreclosure at 76k near journal square! So sad that I didn't have the funds, looked like a great investment but not the best first opportunity. 

Main goal is to now find a multifamily house, probably near market price with no major rehab, just to get the swing of things. Kind of a boring post, but just wanted to catch you guys up to it. Will start to post pics on this next multi-fam that we see.