Brand New to Real Estate

[Brian T.]

Hello, 

I am a 40 year old self employed professional who is tired of the professional life seeing client after client, hour after hour, for the same standard rate (I'm not in the right quadrant!). I am interested in starting a new career in real estate investing (I'm sure you've all heard that a million times!). I live in the northeast. 

I am working with a realtor who has sent me some listings for a condo (I know!) and multifamily properties. To be honest, I'm not really sure which strategy I will use just yet. This would actually be my first real estate purchase. So, I am looking at something I need to live in while also being able to make some $$ at some point, to start out. 

The first is a condo short sale for $116k for a 2 bed 1 bath, no garage, but a finished basement. Seems to be in decent condition and supposedly a great location in the area. The realtor says comps are between $160-180k if I add a 1/2 bath and clean it up. HOA $252. It seems to be in pretty decent condition from the pictures, but I haven't seen it to say for sure. Seems like it could be a good investment for a short term gain. If the HOA lets me I could use the BRRRR strategy, right??? or I could just sell and cash out?

Thoughts??

The second are a few multifamilies that I'm still running the numbers on.

But I have a few questions on both...

1. If I am not going to use a PM, do I still need to calculate that into the expenses? I know some of you say to do it "just in case". But, does it really matter if I'm pretty certain at this point I wont be using one?

On the multifamilies, WITHOUT PM, I'm looking at a 9% cap rate and for at least the two I've calculated it looks like 95% and 97% COC (crazy, right??? prob not calculating correctly). Each is an FHA loan with 3.5% on about $280k = down payment of $9500-9700 and each comes out (with me paying some of the PITI) at $769-854 cash flow. If I didn't pay any of the PITI, I could probably live there free.

2. I haven't seen the units so don't know the repairs yet. Does this get calculated into the sales price, down payment, or some other place? How does this effect the numbers?

Please bear with me, as I obviously don't know all that much what I'm doing... but will someday! :) just looking for some guidance so I don't make a big mistake.

Brian