New member from Pittsburgh but relocated to Long Island.

[Dustin R.]

Hey everyone! I'm a newbie to BiggerPockets and real estate in general. I'm 25 years old and originally from Pittsburgh, Pa but I now reside on eastern Long Island in a town called Bayport, NY. I moved here almost 2 years ago for my job as an Air Traffic Controller. I work at one of the busiest radar facilities in the world and I'm still currently training so it is a very demanding job at the moment, but I love it. Outside of work, I enjoy playing on an men's league ice hockey team a few nights a week, and flying single engine aircraft. Unfortunately, being a pilot is an expensive hobby and I really haven't had much time or money for it lately. Hopefully down the road I can continue to fly.

Being from Pittsburgh, I grew up in a blue collar, working class neighborhood that was filled with affordable homes. I didn't realize how lucky my parents were when they bought our home: a huge 4 bedroom 2 bathroom house for less than 55k. As a kid, I thought homes were cheap everywhere and I wanted to someday own one myself. It wasn't until I moved to Long Island that I quickly learned that buying a home for myself might not be the best thing to do right away. Homes are so expensive here and property taxes are insane! I'm extremely blessed to be making more money than I ever thought I would in my entire life but it's still not enough to REALLY afford to buy a home in this market. Last summer I began to look for a plan to give myself some financial freedom.

Like most of us, I do not want to get tied down by a mortgage payment and live paycheck to paycheck. I decided that since I don't know the first thing about the stock market, I would learn about real estate investing.

My plan is to partner up with a friend of mine who still lives in Pittsburgh to start a flipping business. We were roommates in college and come to think of it, we were the greatest tenants a landlord could ask for. We would spend our own time and money to improve our rented house (hopefully karma will be good to us). The money that we generate from the flips will be rolled into acquiring multi-family homes to buy and hold. The first 2 buy and hold properties will be ones that we also live in; one in Pittsburgh for him, and one here in New York for me. After that, we will continue to flip to generate cash, then collect as many multi-families as we can.

I'm currently learning everything I can about every aspect of real estate by frequenting the BP forums, and reading every book I can get my hands on. I'm also taking an online course to get my Real Estate salesperson license so I can eventually have MLS access.

I'm really happy to have found BiggerPockets and I want to thank@Joshua Dorkin for creating this community. I found BP through the podcast and I'm a huge fan! Thank you for reading my introduction.