New to everything ... sort of - long island, NY

[Nicholas DeLouisa Jr]

Hello everyone!

So I've been a member going on four years now.  Never even filled out my profile until recently.  I always had an interest in real estate, but at the time that I joined I was looking around for different types of investments.  Then I got sidetracked for a few years.  Some days ago, I had an interesting discussion with my brother-in-law.  Long story slightly less long, he wound up shadowing a new mentor for a weekend while the mentor made a deal, visited a few properties, and then took my brother-in-law to dinner and outlined his entire business.

With this story banging around in my mind, I decided that I'm ready and crazy excited to do this.  So, here I am, and I hope to meet some great people here.

A little about me, I work for NYC transit in the subway system, also an electrician on the side.  I go to school nights, and I'm applying for a position as an electrical instructor.  Planning a wedding for early next year.

All of that has me running kind of ragged.  However, school will be over in December, the wedding will be done mid February, and after that I won't know what to do with myself.

My main bare-bones goal in real estate investing is to supplement my retirement income.  I would like to do this using a buy-and-hold strategy.  However, my shoot-for-the-moon is to build a mini-empire.  I'm to start with residential buy-and-hold, and by the time I retire (nineteen years from now), I plan to make my investments large commercial/residential holdings.

The main issue I have right now is that I can't really afford to invest in anything too elaborate in the immediate area around my home.  I live on long island in NY, and even a cheap rehab in a decent town is going for more than I can spend.  I can't really afford a mortgage that high right now - not to mention coming up with the down-payment.  However, I do have some ideas about buying property in upstate NY, where a cheap rehab might go for less than a fifth of whatever I might find where I live.

I know there are ways to invest other than a mortgage, but I want to make sure that in the beginning one of my exit strategies will always be that I can get a mortgage.  So, I will have to invest from about five or six hours away, which obviously presents additional problems I will have to overcome.

Hmm, I think I said too much for an introduction.  Anyway, I hope to be participating here, and I can't wait to get started, even if that's just education for now.

-Nick