Buy and hold best Strategy

[Jose M.]

Hi, I’m a newbie real estate investor. I have a full time job, live in Texas and currently own 2 small multifamily properties and currently looking for a 3rd one. My current interest is buy and hold, and mostly multifamily. What’s my goal ? Mainly I do it thinking about financial independence or at least partially and thinking about my retirement. 

I’m kind of confused on what should be my overall real estate strategy. I realize there are many different ways to do it but I figured I should ask the expert or experienced guys from BP... because I haven’t been able to find an answer by myself

-BRRRR. Many people say this is the best way. I find it a little risky, underestimating the repair expenses, overestimating the ARV, Risk of over leverage, etc.

-Debt snowball. I’ve read this in a few websites. You buy 4 properties with a loan, 25% down or something. The cash flow that is left every year you reinvest it paying extra to the principal in each property. After property #4, you don’t buy a #5. Instead you use all your savings of that year, etc to pay off property #1. So you are back to 3 loans and then buy #5, going back to 4 loans. The idea is you never have more than 4 loans. In other websites they even say, don’t keep buying more properties, you may just stick to 4 or whatever your goal is and pay them off one by one. But then I thought you might lose the leverage factor, using other people money using this... and they say it might be slower which I don’t fully understand cause owning them free and clear getting that much cash flow this soon instead of 15-20 years from now and owning fewer properties does not sound like a bad idea, less work or “headaches” I guess. But I realize it would be thanks to money out of my pocket instead of using equity paid by tenants. Plus I might lose tax write offs, right?.

-Any other better strategies you may suggest.

Thank you guys in advance for all your insights and replies.