Finally getting my feet wet in Raleigh/Durham, NC! First rental under contract

[Nick Merryman]

Hi BiggerPockets! I've been thinking "I should invest in real estate" for a while now; now that I'm finally under contract for my first property(!!), I figured it was time to sign up and introduce myself.

Back in ~2010, my wife and I realized we had some money saved up from our day jobs and started thinking about investing. We were about ready to jump in and buy some rental properties seeing how inexpensive they were at the time, but ultimately figured out I didn't know what I was doing, got scared we hadn't hit the bottom yet, got busy with my Day Job, and that idea got put on hold.

Since then, I've been lurking here, reading endless books and blogs on real estate, getting inspired by flipping shows on HGTV (hah!), listening to at least half of the BP podcasts, and all in all figuring out that yes, this is something I really want to do, and think I can be successful at!

About three months ago, I joined my local area REIA -- TREIA, the Triangle Real Estate Investors Association. After just a meeting or two to give me a kick in the right direction, I went out and found a duplex for sale in an up-and-coming part of Durham. It needs maybe $10k in work, including paint and flooring. Each unit is 2BR 1BA, and market rents are about 2% of sales cost + repairs. I'm under contract set to close in about 2 weeks!

My goal is to try and pick up at least 3-4 more cash-flowing rental properties in the next 2 years between my wife and myself.

Separately, I started talking with my brother-in-law @Daniel Lipetzky  about how great real estate investing could be.  He got excited too, and we decided to try our hand at some wholesaling together -- both to actually wholesale and make some quick profits, and to allow us to find great deals for us to hold on to either individually or together as the deal merits.

We're planning on yellow letters (handwritten for now; likely transitioning to printing our own printed faux-handwritten letters in the future), and are trying to figure out what segment to market to and where to get our list.  

We have a good recommendation from a TREIA member for a list of absentee homeowners with equity. We really prefer the idea of marketing to distressed/pre-NOD/late payments/pre-foreclosures (who also ideally have equity...), but can't find a good list to market to. Listsource.com always seems to get recommended, but even without any other filters it has a whopping total of 84 "distressed" entries in a county with a population of a million people! Recommendations here are very welcome!

Anyway, BP seems awesome and I'm excited to start actively participating instead of just watching silently!