New member looking for advice

[Joe Villasenor]

Hello, my name is Joe and I'm based in Chicago, IL. My goal is to start to buy rental properties so I'm able to take a step back from my day job. I'm still working out what will be the best route for me either small multifamily or SFM. very new to REI so have a lot to learn. What got me into REI is That my brother and I have always talked about owning properties together. We are both at the point where we will be able to in the next year. So I want to make sure we have a plan and know what we are doing before we do. Should I keep trying to learn on my own or start to reach out to people in the industry to try and learn the ropes?

[Manny Vasquez]

Joe - Welcome to the BP community!  This is the best place for all things real estate related.  This is what I recommend for you:

1. Stay with the boring 9-5 so that you can start saving. Depending how much you earn you can step up those savings by getting a side-hustle in any part of real estate....working for a top Real Estate office on weeknights and weekends, working for an RE Investor, working for a General Contractor and learning a few skills, etc. This way you can ramp up your savings AND learn some RE skills.

2.  Read as many RE books as you can get your hands on.  Here are a few I recommend: "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Roberto Kiyosaki; "Set for Life" by Scott Trench; "The Unofficial Guide to Real Estate Investing" by Spencer; "The BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginners Guide" found here on BP; "The Book on Rental Property Investing" by Brandon Tuner.  This will give you a good starting point.  

3. Buy a property as soon as you can. The earlier you start in your RE journey, the better off you will be in the future.  Almost everyone here on BP will tell you that they wish they had started earlier, myself included.

4. House-hack, house-hack, house-hack. This will give you several benefits. The most obvious is that you will be able to offset your mortgage with renting out a few rooms. You will then have a few options with that rent money....you can put it into principal or you can start saving it to purchase yet another property. House hacking will also give you some personal "property management" experience. This will come in handy as you begin to scale.

5. Decide which game you want to play. Do you want to be a house flipper? BRRRR? Real Estate Agent? General Contractor? Buy and Hold? Do you want to LTR, MTR, or STR? Or maybe you want to do a combination of the above?

6. Attend meetups and meet as many people in RE as you can. Since you are just graduating college you may already realize that it's not what you know, but who you know (as a personal note, I had college friends that were barely passing their classes however they ended up with really good paying jobs due to "who they knew"). As they say, your network will be your net-worth.

7. Timing the market does not work. However, time in the market makes all the difference in the world!

I hope this helps and good luck on your RE Journey!