1st Deal Done...now what?

[CJ Witmer]

We are coming up on our first full month of rental income and it's nice.  The tenants do seems to be a bit whiney and once a week seem to have a new gripe and I'm going back and forth with the property manager on some of that, getting contractors setup with PM so I'm not the middle man and just getting the "team" in place.

As a quick summary, we formed and LLC and under that, bought an over/under duplex for $59k and did about $6k of renovations. Mortgage is $375/month and income, after PM is paid, is $1242 so I think we found a decent deal.

So I'm on here because I REALLY want to keep going, but the bank recommends waiting at least 6 months for this one to "season" and show stable income.  Also, we're kinda "tapped out" at the moment financially.  I think I'm already answering my own question, but I wanted input on what you guys have done.  I want to just keep chugging away, buying more and getting to financial freedom more quickly, but I don't want to do too much too quickly.  My mind says that leverage isn't bad as long as income is covering expenses.

Help me out, should I keep going?  I do keep an eye out for deals, but it's almost like torture because if I do see a good deal, I'm afraid to act because the bank wants us to wait.  I know I could check with other banks, go with hard money, private money, etc., but I want to be smart.  Currently, I'm 35 and if I do 1 a year it'll take quite a while to get there.

Our goal (my wife and I) is for me to quit my job and we both do aspects of real estate investing full time and use the time/income to spend time with our kids and perhaps do some charitable work.

[CJ Witmer]

@Vinod Dasani - We do everything through the LLC, except for the first deal obviously, the bank had to secure some personal credit from us to get the LLC started. The way I understand it, we'd only get about 80% of the ARV, so my current bank guy said to let it season for 6 months and then consider another appraisal. Mortgage with escrow for repairs has us all in at $55,000ish. It appraised for $76k so we're barely under the 20% so we wouldn't get much of a loan at this point. I'm hoping in 6 months, we could get it re-appraised for more, but we can't really refinance because of the payoff penalty, so I kinda feel stuck. Or is there something I'm missing about that strategy? Obviously, the other methods mentioned are feasible as well.