Need Advice: Frustrated and Stalled on Starting Again

[Mike Stillwater]

Hi everyone.  Just some quick background on me, I'm a former investor who successfully house hacked 2 SFRs and cash flowed them for around 10 years.  I managed them myself and have a good agent who always found us good tenants that left our properties without vacancies for the time we owned them.  At the time I owned them I mainly used them as supplemental income and unfortunately didn't really see it as something I really wanted to expand on.  I've been successful with my career and I really didn't realize that I actually had a passion for investing in real estate.  To make a long story short my wife and I decided to sell them at the top of the market.  We used the money to purchase a better primary residence.  

It took me a year here at our new house to realize I wanted to start my own investing business.  After a lot of research and learning a lot of the things I didn't know about purchasing and managing the cash for the rentals I came up with my criteria and plan.  The frustration I ran into is I came up with a plan to use our large amount of equity in our primary as down payments for some rentals.  My wife ended up being completely against the idea and that left me with the inability to fund down payments and cash to close.  I've been spinning my wheels now for several weeks trying to come up with some way to come up with the money other than old fashion saving up which would take me several years.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  I've looking to buy multi-unit properties with the goal of buying apartments.

[Austen Mueller]

If you cant leverage equity in your home some Ways you could still invest in real estate would with as little money down as possible would be..... 

1. Do you have good enough credit to get a 3.5% down loan? In my market it's not impossible to buy a cash flowing asset for around 12k Down. Helping an investor right now do just that. Investing out of your state can be great if your market is too expensive. 

Getting Creative 

2. Seller Financing- If you get lucky and know someone who owns their house outright and looking to downsize and getting ready for retirement. If they want more steady income over the years VS cash in pocket tomorrow this could be a good solution/opportunity for the two of you. 

3. Subject to- No experience with this but if someone is really looking to get out from under a loan you can just take it over with a negotiable down payment. This will require some leg work to find

4. Syndication- Invest what money you have for a certain return. This option is more readily available, but doesnt promise as large of an overall return on cash invested. most passive.  

5. Renegotiate with your wife- Maybe not the most attractive option, But this is a problem a lot of people experience. You are not alone sir. I had to deal with it too. In my experience the "break through" moment came more so when I really started to listening to her concerns. I was in "the Know" and already did hours of research so everything to me sounded like a "no brainer" and common sense. I had to remember she did not have any of that. She just saw me ranting and raving frustrated she wasnt "getting it." It helped me to pitch it as if I was at a sales meeting, and not talking to my wife. And why not? She just of well have been a multi million dollar investor if she was standing in between me and my goal. Hope that helps 

Best of Luck in Your Journey. Don't Give up!