Rental Property Investor · Savannah, GA · Member since 2018 · 174 posts · 129 votes
6y
@Dan Mackin I just made the millennial cut (maybe unfortunately haha)!
1. Currently house hacking through a VA loan, will move in about 6 months and it will be my first full rental. It's an SFR where I currently rent bedrooms, unfortunately not many 2-4 units in my area.
2. Just started actually investing since I just graduated college. Now I'm looking for value add multi family (primarily commercial 5+ units) in my hometown since it's a market I know and I'll move around a lot with the military.
3. Just take action, once you have the baseline knowledge you can learn along the way. As much as I'd like to have a system for every step of the way, it's not needed until it's needed.
Rental Property Investor · Savannah, GA · Member since 2018 · 174 posts · 129 votes
6y
@Dan Mackin I just made the millennial cut (maybe unfortunately haha)!
1. Currently house hacking through a VA loan, will move in about 6 months and it will be my first full rental. It's an SFR where I currently rent bedrooms, unfortunately not many 2-4 units in my area.
2. Just started actually investing since I just graduated college. Now I'm looking for value add multi family (primarily commercial 5+ units) in my hometown since it's a market I know and I'll move around a lot with the military.
3. Just take action, once you have the baseline knowledge you can learn along the way. As much as I'd like to have a system for every step of the way, it's not needed until it's needed.
Rental Property Investor · n/a · Member since 2019 · 143 posts · 117 votes
6y
1. Buy and hold! First property was purchased with 20% down on a 30 year mortgage. I'd like to explore more of a BRRRR approach with hard money going forward. I feel like saving a 20% down payment every time will take a lot longer to scale up my portfolio when I could use hard money, rehab, and refi out at the end.
2. Investing since 2019, but studying and learning as much as I could since early 2018 I guess.
3. Biggest lesson- I guess I played it safe and was in a hurry to land my first deal, so I bought a property only 4% under appraised value and because of this, I have all my capital sitting in the deal until it makes sense to refi out. I should have either sent out a ton of offers 15-20% under market value until something stuck or looked for a more rehab intensive project where I can increase the value. Overall though, I am still glad I did it.
1. Any way to make money/wealth. My first focus is to find properties that I can cash flow on, primarily through BRRRR. However, if the cash flow is good enough, I am not opposed to buy and hold. If the property cannot cash flow, then I will look to see if I can flip it. Currently, my purchases for down payments will be made by using a HELOC I have on my current rental property.
2. A little over a year. I purchased a single family house in 2016; lived in it while making renovations to it. Then in 2018, I moved in with my at the time girlfriend (wife) and rented the property out. Property started earning me money in December of 2018 and the tenant recently renewed their lease for another year. I am currently in the beginning stages of purchasing my second investment, which looks like will be a flip candidate.
3. Biggest lesson, probably building the team. My property is located in Kansas City, but life changed quickly and my wife and I moved to Rhode Island. So I went from self managing to outsourcing activities quicker than I anticipated. I am now in the process of trying to find a general contractor for my future projects while not being located in the city I am investing in.
Rental Property Investor · Chicago, IL · Member since 2018 · 1 post · 1 vote
6y
'95 Millennial
1. What's your strategy?
Buy and hold - Currently looking where I can generate the most cash flow with the lowest amount down from my personal finances. A single condo is where I have my first experience. I want to move into 2-4 units so I can build my portfolio and then look more into multifamily (5+) when I have more funds available.
2. How long have you been investing?
Self education investing - many years
RE investing - 2 years
3. What has been your biggest lesson?
Cash is king in the beginning. IMO you need money to make money. I know people are still recovering from the RE crisis we had but there are also people who bought condos CASH @50k and now they're worth @100k.
Rental Property Investor · Chicago, IL · Member since 2019 · 11 posts · 13 votes
6y
Paid 2k for it when I switched from FHA to 203k , with it expiring on closing I lost all leverage on final walk through. Seller was a POS and didn't do repairs until literally the days before when agreement had been a week before closing. Needless to say dumb a sellers agent went in to turn on boiler because one of the repairs were to fix all radiators to soon find out his repair men had cut an entire pipe on first floor leading to second so the entire rooM filled with steam. Because pipe was missing and being rushed because we had to get to closing table I missed the fact that we couldn't check radiators upstairs to make sure leaks had been fixed because there was no pipe forcing steam.. big rookie mistake .
Realtor · Oklahoma City, OK · Member since 2016 · 37 posts · 12 votes
6y
@Dan Mackin
Hey Dan!
I do the BRRRR strategy with single family homes. I started off selling these exact type of properties as realtor to investors for 2 1/2 years. I've been buying now for almost a year but mainly in the last 4 months have I been aggressive using private money.
I currently have almost 40 single family homes with 10 in contract. I do have a business partner as well.
The biggest lesson I've learned so far is not starting soon enough.
1. I'm a lawyer and I also own a construction company. I try to leverage that to work on syndication projects and also BRRRR-type projects. I also manage some investment properties for my family back in Korea.
2. Around 8 years as an active investor. I was forced to take over a lot of the family business matters when my father passed away.
3. In no particular order: (a) passive investing is not really passive investing if you don't have the right asset; (b) find good partners and people to work with; (c) learn how to delegate better; and (d) don't buy avocado toasts.
Disclaimer: While I’m an attorney licensed to practice in PA, I’m not your attorney. What I wrote above does not create an attorney/client relationship between us. I wrote the above for informational purposes. Do not rely on it for legal advice. Always consult with your attorney before you rely on the above information.
Rental Property Investor · Savannah, GA · Member since 2018 · 174 posts · 129 votes
6y
@Dan Mackin
Economies of scale is really the driving factor. The fact that one closing can result in acquiring multiple doors vs one, and realizing that if my SFR is vacant that property isn't doing anything. Where as with a multi if one of the two, ten, or 50 doors is vacant it isn't a big deal. You can also acquire multi's at a much lower cost/unit, which will in term drive a higher ROI. A mentor of mine also made the point that the commercial lending process is much easier to deal with then the residential side of things. We'll see how it goes!
Real Estate Agent · Member since 2019 · 192 posts · 131 votes
6y
'93 millennial here!
1. What's your strategy?
-Buy and hold (currently own my condo); MFH BRRRs. Working my day job and saving ~20% plus in the process of getting my RE license so sell in the evenings and weekends. Using all the proceeds of that for acquisitions.
2. How long have you been investing?
- 8 months but just starting to get organized and pick up momentum.
3. What has been your biggest lesson?
- You need capital. I have no intention to quit work so I can't partner with someone and offer a ton of time for less capital investment. Too many risks with that but kudos to those who've succeeded with it. My day job just doesn't produce capital fast enough so it's up to me to take action, grind and increase my income if I want to get ahead and achieve my goals. Otherwise, I can save up and buy a property every 5 or so years...doesn't cut it for me.
Rental Property Investor · Member since 2019 · 3 posts · 2 votes
6y
1. What's your strategy?
Buy and Hold, SFH and small Multi-family. Starting to look into BRRR a little more as I would like to go that route for equity build up.
2. How long have you been investing?
A little less than a year.
3. What has been your biggest lesson?
Do not be afraid to go for it. Educate yourself, run the numbers, and if it makes sense, go for it.
1. Started with conventional buy and hold. Decided that wouldn't snowball fast enough to retire substantially early so we started to BRRRR.
2. 3 Years, although 90% of our investing activity has happened in the last 14 months.
3. Biggest lesson is don't step over dollars to pick up pennies. I was shopping mortgages for conventional traditional lenders over tenths of a % interest rate. If your strategy is BRRRR, which is heavily reliant on financing; it's more important to save hard credit inquiries and maximize your number of conforming loans before going commercial, portfolio or hard money lending options.
My husband and I are both 25 and are fairly new to investing.
1. Our strategy is BRRRRing small multi family and buying turn key multi family out of state. We currently own 11 units and trying to pick up a 14 unit portfolio right now that consists of a 5 unit, 4 unit, triplex and duplex.
2. We started investing at the end of March of last year.
3. The biggest lesson we have learned is to do more research. We were really excited and jumped right in to investing without doing as much research of the area as we should have. After buying our first deal, we got even more excited and it felt like we got addicted to it. Because of that, we accelerated really fast even though our team wasn't necessarily solidified. We didn't find the "rockstars" of our area and struggled because of it.
We have learned a lot last year and plan to pick up an additional 22 units this year with all of the skills that we have learned and hopefully expand into larger multi family like 5-20 unit buildings.
im 28 so I guess I qualify
1. What's your strategy? cash flow vs appreciation, find a mfh property that would pay my mortgage and put money in my pocket every month
2. How long have you been investing? started investing in crypto about 4-5 years ago, 401k and index funds about 5 years. real estate about 2 years
3. What has been your biggest lesson?
have enough money put away in reserves, when it rains it will pour, well at least for me
2. How long have you been investing? I started in 2012 unintentionally with a SFH house hack before I knew what a house hack was. I moved out of state 2015 and that house became a full time rental at that time. My husband and I started intentionally purchasing additional rental property in 2017.
3. What has been your biggest lesson? Always have reserves. Everything takes longer and costs more money than you plan for when you first get started.
Rental Property Investor · Columbus, OH · Member since 2015 · 184 posts · 162 votes
6y
Thanks for asking @Dan Mackin! And what are your answers to these three questions?!
1. What's your strategy? Not sure what you'd call this, but when we bought our sfh back in 2016 California had just passed the Accessory Dwelling Unit ADU law. We are about 8 weeks from completion of our 3 bed 2.5 bath 1180 sq ft ADU and plan to sell, capitalize on nice appreciation and value add of ADU. Hopefully selling this summer! (considered refinancing and renting it out but after refinancing and costs we'd be losing money each month with 7k mortgage+2k in expenses per mo with about 8k per mo in rent, plus don't want to worry about vacancies with such a high mortgage). Then we are moving soon to Columbus, Ohio (better quality of life for our young family, wife's brother and his family are there, my sister and family are in North Carolina).
Once we have cash from the sale of our LA property will be exploring options for what to do next with investing. My wife will be in LA for work still often so thinking about purchasing a condo in good area that can appreciate well/BRRR and sell in 4 years or so after my wife's contract with her organization is up. Also considering duplexes (50-75k range) and 4 unit complexes in the Midwest (100k-125k range). We have many friends who are Phd's, MD's, lawyers so thinking one day to do syndicate where I use their resources to invest in larger multi families and sfh's in growing areas like Cincinatti, Indianapolis, Orlando. BRRR makes sense to me too since I've seen the power of buying and holding for 4 years while market was climbing fast and (hopefully) make a great return, so sfh's in rising price areas seems like a good way to go too. A good friend of mine flips but that's probably too much work/projects to manage as I work full time already but not ruling it out. Goal is to own 50 properties and earn 200k per year from them, hopefully in 10 years or so (but it might take 20 lol). I am new to intentionally learning about all these strategies and am new to the Bigger Pocket's forums/community but excited to learn from everyone - and connect with fellow Millennials :-)
2. How long have you been investing? With my own money? Never. And you could say I won't be really investing until we sell our sfh and use that money to buy our own properties. But I also think of it in that I researched and convinced family to help us buy our sfh 4 years ago and saw the market going up and the opportunity of doing the ADU. We've also sucked at saving, but this is a top priority with our move to Columbus: lower cost of living and SAVING 2k per month or more plus the profits from the LA property sale (hopefully).
3. What has been your biggest lesson? Partnership is the foundation for everything, and with shared values and goals great things are possible!
Warsaw, IN · Member since 2017 · 229 posts · 270 votes
6y
@Dan Mackin
Millennial right here.
1. Strategy: Long term buy and hold rentals in the Midwest
2. Time spent investing: 2.5 years focused on RE-spent the previous 10 yrs focusing on DRIP stocks. I largely pulled out of stocks and almost exclusively RE since 2017
3. Don’t let your equity sit idle while you’re in acquisition phase- velocity of money concept.
Rental Property Investor · Chicago, IL · Member since 2017 · 293 posts · 383 votes
6y
@Dan Mackin
1. I am buying strictly for cash flow. I BRRRR nearly every property because I like creating equity. I've inadvertently created a real estate BRRRRing company and that's all I do now.
2. I’ve been renting out properties since 2015 but BRRRRing since 2018.
3. My biggest lesson is hard to say, in real estate there are so many. Recency bias, I would say don’t trust a contractor. Always use your own contracts for absolute clarity.