Today I am a full time real estate agent, property manager and investor with 15 doors. 10 years ago I had no intention of any of this and 3 years ago I had just purchased my first buy and hold but I was just getting started on the rehab and didn't even have my first tenant yet. I hear so many people ask how they can get into real estate and I work with so many others that are figuring out how to get into their first or next deal that it got me to thinking about how I got my first property. As I think back, the terrible "sports car" that I just had to have when I graduated college started the whole chain reaction. People think that real estate investors were already rich, had a great deal fall in their lap, got lucky, had a rich uncle or any number of other things and don't realize that everyone starts somewhere very basic. We all made a decision or two(or 12) that helped us get to where we are now. It's a long post but here is my story:

I graduated college in 2008, passed the series 7 & 66 exams and got a job as an investment advisor. As it turns out, when everything is losing 40% and you are 22 but look 15 it is difficult to sell investments. Fortunately I realized this quickly and started working at a bank making a whopping $30k per year. However, before I realized that it wasn't going to be easy to get a high paying job I sold my car and used my savings to buy a Chrysler Crossfire, I wanted something exotic looking and in my budget it fit the bill. Man did I hate that car, terrible rattles, useless cupholder, slower than my grandmother and just generally too small for me. I took a beating when I sold it too, after making money by flipping cars in college I lost $2500 on this dud. However, I was glad to sell it and downsize into a cheap truck and put the difference down on my first house in early 2009.

I showed up to look at the first house I ever bought expecting a monster, the pictures online were terrible and the entire inside was green, including the ceiling fans and the carpet looked gross. It was a foreclosure and it had been for sale for a while and the price had finally dropped to the top of my budget. When I showed up the whole house had been painted and had new carpet, only the green fan remained! I bought the house and rented a room to a buddy so I could pay the mortgage, contribute to my 401k and still have a few bucks left over for beer and hot wings. I had always wanted to flip a house but the beer and hot wings were my priority in these days

By the time I had lived there a couple years I had changed jobs and received a promotion that took me to Mobile, AL so I sold the house and got a check for $25k at closing, my initial $10k down payment had grown into $25k and I was ecstatic! I found another foreclosure in Mobile that looked like a deal, it was 2012 so there were a few deals still available. It had been priced at $315k originally and dropped to $245k after almost a year. During that time it had gone under contract a few times but some pipes broke and ruined some of the hardwood and some sheetrock so it came back on the market at $225k and caused a bidding war. I'm not sure what the other bids were but I offered full asking price. The bank said they would make the needed repairs initially but then changed their mind and asked for as is bids, they changed their mind a few more times and took 3-4 weeks to respond to offers. Banks are really really bad at selling houses usually, that was certainly the case here. All of the other buyers except 1 got tired of the game and pulled out. I eventually bought the house for $205k.

I put about $10k into the house plus a good bit of my own labor and some free family help(I certainly wouldn't have gotten this far without them) to get the house into livable shape. I rented out a room to a buddy and kept contributing to my 401k as aggressively as I could but I was house poor for a while. After several raises at work and another $7500 in improvements to the house I came across a deal to do that flip that I had always wanted to do! In February of 2015 I closed on a 100 year old house in mid-town Mobile that had been vacant for 12 years and occupied by hoarders before that... it was a mess. The bank was willing to lend me $74k on the equity in my home so I used a HELOC to buy the flip and a private money loan to complete the rehab. So my "sports car" that helped me buy my first house had now snowballed into a $74k line of credit.

I'm going to pause here to point out the problem many people have getting into real estate. Back in Oct 2015 at 29 I had been working in the real world for 7 years and had worked hard to get several promotions and raises. I had been contributing aggressively to my 401k and it was starting to build up nicely. However, I had very little actual cash. Certainly not enough to buy investment properties cash and not even enough to put down 20% on a decent property. All of my cash was tied up in my house and 401k. Without that home equity line of credit I would not have been able to start on my current path. Pro Tip: Don't keep all of your money tied up if you want to be a real estate investor!

In late 2015 I sold my house and paid off the Heloc and in early 2016 I sold the flip house and finished renovating the quadplex that I bought in 2015(that is another story) after finishing the quadplex I did a cash out refi, quit my job, moved to Pensacola and got my real estate license. I didn't think I could buy any more property until I had two years of tax returns as an agent so I didn't buy anything in 2016. In 2017 I realized I was wrong. I bought a duplex cash and later did a cash out refi, brrrr method(where I learned what a seasoning period is...), and a single family house owner financed with 15% down. This year I picked up a townhouse in January(brrrr method), a quadplex in April(owner financing), a duplex in August(Owner Financing for 12 months while I brrrr) and I am doing a 1031 exchange of the single family house into a nice duplex that I have under contract now. It all snowballed from the decision to sell my car and put the money down on a house. I have kept re-investing that same money to get to 15 doors and I plan to keep re-investing through 1031 exchanges and the BRRRR strategy.

Don't let people tell you that you can't invest in real estate, that you are crazy or that you need to stick to the security of a "real job" Don't limit yourself, I can only imagine where I would be if I had started back in 2013 when I initially found BP or if I hadn't taken 2016 off from buying because I didn't think I could get a loan.

Decide what you want and go for it! What decision can you make today that can be your Chrysler Crossfire? What can you do to set yourself up for future success? It doesn't have to be a major decision or major sacrifice. Just take a step in the right direction. Many people are so much further along than I am and I still have a long way to go but I am very thankful for where I am today and the things that led me here.

Matt Jones

[email protected]

850-889-0945

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