New member from just outside Indianapolis

[Jeff O.]

Hello everyone,

My name is Jeff and I have always been intrigued by real estate.  I remember hearing my parents talk about this piece of land or that building lot that they could have bought years ago and it is now worth 10x the price.  I told myself that was not going happen to me.  

Shortly after graduating college and getting married, my wife and I bought a small piece of farm ground in Hamilton county while we lived in a mobile home for almost nothing.  Our neighbor had his house repo'ed by the bank so we bought the house and decided that if we were going to live in this house we wanted do a little updating.  We continued to live in the mobile home while we worked on the house.  Two years later we had a brand new, paid for house.  Everything was replaced except the rafters, studs, and joists.  With the help of family and friends, we did all the work ourselves except the roof and new electrical panel.  It was a great learning experience that has carried over to so many things in life.  

We now own the mobile home and have rented it out off and on over the past few years.  Overall it was not a great experience.  The first guy had bags and bags of trash piled up in the garage.  Then he did not tell me the tub drain broke and water was pouring out under the tub.  We had to replace the subfloor.  Then the next girl turned in her 30 day notice after 1 month (I had been taught by one of the other RE sites to do month to month). 

 Anyways,  I have always lived in Indiana.  Grew up in NW IN, went to school in NE IN and finally settled in central IN.  My RE goals are to find 3 or 4 properties per year to keep as rentals and have a property manager take care of them.  I also would like to fix and flip a few here and there.  I have sent out a handful of yellow letters and have been working on finding a deal in my area.  

I signed up on the meetup site and see that there are 2 investor meetings tomorrow night, one at 6 and the other at 6:30.  Which one is better or more appropriate for my investing plan.  I am planning on going to one of them so I hope to start meeting some of you that I see here on BP.  

Sorry for the wall of text.  I guess I ramble some times.  

-Jeff