Greetings, from Matt in South Bend / Northern Indiana

[Matthew Parrott]

Hello, I just found biggerpockets last night, so I thought I would introduce myself. I have done 10 deals since 2004 or so, I currently own 3 properties, 2 paid for cheap single family homes, and my former home, which I still have a mortgage on. In a typical month I am suppose to collect about $1650 in rents, but after all my expenses it's probably closer to $1k, but I don't know how often I have a typical month, especially lately with multiple tenants moving out, a roof repair, and a water heater in the last 3 months :( 

I found this site after doing more research on creative real estate, and specifically because I want to go full time into it. My history is in cell phones, 5 years in retail (including management) and about 5 years being self employed buying and selling. In roughly two and a half years of doing that full time, I had nearly $250k is sales starting from nothing in my hand, and nothing in the bank. Basically my business included creating a reputation in the area, and getting out tons of Craigslist ads, that I Buy / Sell / Trade cell phones. 

Towards the end, roughly 50-60% of my business was from repeat customers or referrals. I spent hardly any time looking for deals, and instead people were hunting me down to buy their phones. Primarily my profits came from buying phones right, when you buy them at 40% of value, a lot of things can go wrong, and you can still make money. I very rarely gave offers, instead I started by asking them how much they wanted, if that was their best price, and then offered slightly below that. I was never afraid to walk away from offers, because I wasn't interested in the phone, I was only interested in how much it cost, and how much I could sell it for (I never once cared how much someone paid for something, that's irrelevant, they are probably lying anyways). I didn't get out of bed if I couldn't make $100 off each deal, unless it was just really convenient for me to take another deal that I would make $50-75 off of, or I was helping a friend, or needed a variety of inventory. I needed to sell 35 phones a month to make my salary, and I typically did closer to 50 deals and one month almost 75 phones. Towards the end I also bought tons of phones with specific issues for parts, repairs, or because I could solve their problems, and because of that, I dominated the market for a while, at one point I had 65% of all the phones for sale online in my market.

What I would like to do is to apply all of those same lessons that I learned in buying and selling cell phones, to real estate. I knew a long time ago, that I needed to move up a '0' to the end of my purchases and sales, I thought the next move might be cars, but I don't know cars like I do phones, and I don't have connections in the automotive industry either. I can't make predictable purchases without some of these things. The next step up from that in my mind, was houses, we simply add another '0' (or two) to the end of the purchase and sales price. But I don't really have connections or a lot of experience the real estate industry either.

The problem I see at this point is two fold: 1. I don't have a job, I have been self employed for 3.5 years, with the last 6 months being a total collapse of the cell phone market and my business in this area. So, that leaves me with a cash flow problem. 2. I don't have a lot of capital to work with. If push comes to shove I can maybe come up with 10k, but that doesn't solve my cash flow problem. The way I see it, I need to be able to create immediate income (like a lump sum from a rehab or something) and work towards passive income to get me truly full time. I don't have any real rehab skills myself, I am an able bodied guy, and can learn, but I have no real skills at this time.

Come December (after the holidays) I am looking for the quickest way possible to put 5k in my hands to breath for 2 months, followed by 10k, 20k, and then focus on regular passive income and continual flips. That's where I am, maybe you can give me hints on how to get there, or what you have done! :)