Recomendations about Investing with Student Debt

[Brady Boyer]

My name is Brady and I just graduated from Penn State this May. I will be moving to NYC in August, and I am eager to start investing in real estate as soon as possible. I have been reading books about real estate since high school and took numerous real estate classes in college. I want to use a buy and hold strategy once I start investing.

My issue, and what I want to get your opinion on, is that I have about $60,000 in student debt. My plan is to try and pay this down aggressively until I get the balance down to around $20,000 (which I anticipate taking 4-5 years) and then try to start buying investment properties. While paying down the debt, I have also budgeted to save 15% of my income, so that when I get my debt down to around $20,000 I will have built up enough money for a down payment on an investment property. My reasoning for this plan is that I don’t want to take on too much risk with that much debt, and I am skeptical if I would even qualify for a loan with that much debt as a new investor. What are your opinions about this plan? Do you have any suggestions? Has anyone else experienced a similar situation?

In the meantime I would like to start getting familiar with the NYC market and surrounding boroughs. Does anyone have any suggestions on which markets outside of NYC work best for a buy and hold strategy?