Hello fellow BP Members !

[Gianni Cardeno]

Hello fellow BP Members! 

My name is Gianni and I am currently wrapping up my last year in college. Currently working for a Contractor/Developer here in Miami, FL and have always been surrounded by the world of real estate. 

Figured my first step would be educating myself properly. So I became a licensed Realtor in 2018 and will soon be a licensed Broker in 2022. I read Multi-Family Millionaire Vol.1&2 and occasionally listen to the BP podcast.  

Any advice for a young-grasshopper? Thanks in advance-

[Jim Adams]

Sounds like you're off to a good start. If I could rewind time or send a message to my younger self it would be "buy, buy, baby."  I looked at a number of properties in my younger years that I didn't buy and every single one of them would have made me a fortune had I bought them.  Just run your numbers, make sure it makes sense and you can make your payments, and go and do it. I would start w/ house hacking, multi-family if you can. Take on fixed debt while it's cheap and build as many income sources as you can.  

You have access to a free education right here on the forums and in the podcast. I'm listening to every episode of the podcast starting from the beginning and I just remember there's 1 episode in early 2017 where Brandon Turner asks David Meyer what he's watching on Netflix and David says The Americans and I just thought, 1) damn that was a good show but 2) I SOOOO wish I knew about BiggerPockets in 2017 when I was watching the Americans!  

Also, another lesson I would teach myself is take out a HELOC while you still live in your house. Then you can move out and move on and you've already tapped into your equity, so there's no need to sell. My husband and I moved out of our last house in a hurry when we were expecting baby #5 and we didn't get around to pulling the HELOC. The house appreciated like crazy and our tenants moved out 33 months after we did, so we had 3 months to sell to beat out capital gains. We made a killing and had a quarter million dollars in tax free income. But less than 12 months later, the house 4 down (same model house, equal comp) sold for over $100k more. So what we saved in capital gains we would have more than gotten in another year of rent and appreciation. If I had grabbed a HELOC before I left, I would have kept the asset and still been able to take advantage of the equity.

~Jim's wife, Kristina :)