60 Day Challenge To Buy My First Apartment Building

[Chris Cliff]

For an embarrassingly long time "Buy an 8-12 unit apartment building" has been on my list of things to do. It has been talked about, pondered, debated but has never happened.

So, my thought is to make it a 60 day challenge and document the whole damn thing.  

What I would like is some opinion on just how crazy am I, how possible this is and so on. 

Essentially I'll be starting from scratch.  I'm not dead broke or anything (thought that would make for a better story (Man buys apartment while living in a card board box), but I'm not sitting on enough cash to plunk down 20% or have credit score that makes bankers salivate.

Pretty much at a point where I have to make this happen to save my sanity. 

Thoughts?  Potential hurdles?  Open to any and all input.

[Daniel O.]

Anyone (with the means) can buy an 8-12 unit building in the time frame you suggest. It is a great goal. But you might consider refining your goal slightly. Those types of buildings are not cheap these days, and it would be easy to buy the wrong building or pay too much. You are competing against a lot of foreign money now that is looking for a safe place to park and may be less concerned with IRR and CoC than you, as an investor, should be. Also set some parameters for your IRR and CoC goals. Really drill down on your market area so that you can be as realistic as possible when you begin trying to calculate IRR for a particular deal. And make sure you have a great team lined up to help you evaluate the property and do the due diligence needed to make sure you have a deal you really want to close on.