Advice on purchasing my first property!

[Ben Capriolo]

Hello,

I am currently 23 years old, renting a townhouse with some buddies and tired of throwing my money down the drain and gaining no equity. Conveniently, my mom is a real estate agent, but she doesn’t have much knowledge of actually investing in real estate (She’s a great realtor, don’t get me wrong). I want to buy my first property. I got qualified for a 30 yr with $0 down for a USDA home loan. I was told by my mortgage lady I was approved up to $160,000. I am looking for advice on what I should do. I want to buy a home that I can eventually, sooner rather than later, turn into a rental property. What techniques should I look for? I don’t have much, if any, experience fixing up houses or anything along those lines, but would love to learn because I am looking to get into real estate investing and building my portfolio maybe eventually with flips.

I have a 9-5 job making around $40k a year and save about $500 or so a month. (Probably could save more) Im really just looking on advice on how I should continue to best prepare and set me up financially for investing in real estate. Would it be a bad idea to keep renting and just try to save as much as possible? Should I try to purchase a home and rent a room or two out. (House hacking I believe its called).

Clearly Im a big rookie but really looking to get into this and hopefully make real estate investing a full time job.

Ps. I am also currently working on getting my real estate license here in WV.

I would appreciate any comments or messages! Im all ears.

Thanks,

Ben Capriolo