?New from Ardmore, PA a Philadelphia suburb

[Jeff Deville]

My wife and I are getting started in real estate. We don't have much background in the field yet. We've read a few books, and taken a short 2 day online class. She worked as an apartment office manager once upon a time. But aside from owning our own home, we're green.

I'm a high end software developer who's worked at small startups, and big behemoth's over the years. I have a 2 yr old son with another on the way. So my first goal is to be able spend more time with my kids and my wife, by following the Kiyosaki principles of his Cashflow Quadrant without sacrificing our standard of living. I love software and am planning on using my work to finance some of our real estate investments. In 5 years or so, I'd like to be able to see my income from real estate eclipse what I make in software development, so that I can either get further into real estate, or go back to software startups that I'm passionate about.

At this moment, I've probably not got too much to offer in real estate knowledge, but I've been the CTO at a few of my startups, so if you have any questions on how technology could be brought to bear on a real estate problem, I'm your guy. Let me know how I can help.

As for immediate plans/goals, we're looking to start building our team at the moment. I guess the first thing we need is an investment-friendly realtor, but any suggestions on local folks in all of the relevant industries would really be appreciated, other than accounting. I think we have that role wrapped up.

We're gravitating toward buy and rent options, and will be trying to get a sense for where the numbers make that strategy feasible. (It appears that rents are lower than mortgages in the Ardmore area, so we'll start expanding our scope until we can find an area that makes sense.)