Newbie from Northern California the Bay Area

[Ralph E.]

My name is Ralph Easterling and I've been originating mortgage loans in the Bay Area for the last 26 years. I recently came across this site in doing my due diligent in researching "Transaction Funding" and "Wholesaling" I like to take my real estate finance experience to the next level with "Wholesaling" I have flip a couple of properties before but just recently got introduce to "Wholesaling" I would love the help of getting to know this part of the business.

[Account Closed]

@Ralph E. : I have been on this site less than 2 weeks and one of the of the things I have learned is that Building your Team (from Chapter 4 of the Free Beginner's Guide) is key and this site walks on the talk on team building, as evidenced by your welcome to the site - so welcome!!.

As to being overwhelmed - I totally get that, and here is what is working for me:

1) As @Paul Timmins said, I keep going back to the http://www.biggerpockets.com/starthere page to make sure I have got that knocked out.

2) I then read the beginners guide and developed my High Level Business plan which helped me understand / clarify my goals, my exit strategy and what I needed to do to get there at a high level.

3) The business plan was great, but it was not an Action Plan (i.e. what do I RIGHT NOW), and this is where the forum alerts came in great. I alerted on "wife" (because mine is SUPER skeptical) and "risk" and "equity" and learned that: a) I had to figure out which market I wanted to be in (I have my primary residence in the bay area and my first investment property in Oregon) and b) learn my market.

4) I am now working on identifying and learning about different markets and the properties in those markets, while growing my knowledge base. I *try* split my time (since I have a day job) as follows: a) commute - I listen to podcasts and then since I get to work 30 minutes early, I document in my OneNote all the good ideas that I know I will need some day, b) lunch - do my best to read and respond to BP forums, c) night - this is when I review and document markets and properties to help me learn them and recognize deals and spend time on BP. Obviously, I do not always follow this exactly as I am responding to this post instead of making notes on the podcast I listened to, but in general this is what I try to do.

5) I still need to get into local BP meet ups and real estate investment clubs as well as read the BP blog, but this is where I am at today. Once *I think* I get to know the markets and houses, I will then start posting deal analysis in the deal analysis forum and once I feel comfortable I will propose to my wife the market I want to invest in and the house I want to invest in. My current plan is to use a HELOC for 10% of the down payment and 10% cash. I think this will reduce the risk enough for my wife, yet at the same time, allow me to accelerate my second acquisition!

Hopefully this is somewhat helpful and worth the time it took to read!