Native Texan living in NoVA

[Jonathan Carden]

Greetings!

A little bit about myself:

My name is Jonathan, I'm 25-years old, living in the Northern Virginia / D.C. area, and married with a baby (boy) on the way. I currently work as director-level major gifts fundraiser for a non-profit here, but am hoping to parlay some of my skills to a career in real estate.

My mother has worked as a real estate agent for a majority of my life (in TX), even starting her own company / brokerage six years ago, so I've grown up on the fringes of the real estate community. Having built up a decent-sized nest egg, I have been ingesting as much real estate knowledge as possible over the past six months, with my eye on either buying a home in the NoVA-area to live in or a home in TX to rent.

I've also thought about becoming a realtor here on the East Coast, but it would be a huge step back in terms of security and income for the first few years. I have a great job now, especially for my relative youth, but -- as I mentioned above -- I want to use my personal skills to generate income commiserate with my production, as opposed to generating millions in return for a 3% raise each year.

The more I read, the more I realize how little I know, but I'm looking forward to closing the knowledge gap over the upcoming months (thanks in no small part to BP).

I'll take all the advice I can get, so please feel free to share any tips you may have for someone in my position.

[Alicia Britt]

Hi Jonathan! Congrats on the upcoming addition to your family!

I would love for you to come to our office at some point and sit down and talk real estate. The team I work with has 50+ years of combined experience (pretty good since it's a tight-knit team of 3) but we are looking to expand. We are located in Woodbridge, VA. If you're interested, please feel free to contact me.

The one thing I told myself when I got into real estate is that I could just do it part-time. At the time, I was working at a law firm in D.C. as a Senior Paralegal and was pretty comfortable. I felt great about the work I was doing (the firm specialized in representing children with disabilities who needed advocates for specialized education) but thought it would be nice to have a little extra income. So I started, just weekends at first, and then found myself addicted. Now I am a full-time agent and love it. I always tell people that you get out of it what you put into it.

The NoVa area is a great place to be an agent too! Smack dab in the middle of 3-5 military bases whose on-base housing is at capacity and close to D.C. Basically, what I'm trying to say is someone is always looking for a house in our area.