Newly retired soldier/aspiring investor from Colorado Springs

[Michael Olson]

Hello all,

As stated in my title, I'm recently retired from the US Army and looking to start a new career as a real estate investor. I have a day job (I'm a government contractor) but I currently work from home and essentially set my own hours which means I have ample time to study real estate investing strategies and hunt for deals. I'm currently focused on building my capital and studying the business before jumping in. My goal is to get to the point where I am flipping houses as a day job to fund my investment properties (rentals). My wife is working toward her real estate agents license and plans to start a property management company (managing other peoples properties as well as our investment properties) as well as using her license to help find deals and to sell our flipped homes. 

I'm new to the area and hoping to network with other investors. I look forward to engaging the Bigger Pockets community and learning from the group. With luck I'll get to a point where I have some wisdom of my own to share. If anybody in the area want to grab a cup of coffee or a cold beer just give me a holler.

Mike

[Kerry Baird]

We both were active duty, and started out by buying owner occupied houses at duty stations.  By the time I moved into being "mom" we bought a number of properties by marketing and working the pre-foreclosure process.  We PCSd overseas and had to figure out how to buy at a distance. 

As you listen to the podcasts, sort out what strategy works best for your time and personality, as well as risk tolerance; then focus on learning that strategy. We started with houses that we lived in and fixed.  We then fixed and rented houses out.  That lead to fix and flip, and then we wholesaled.  Once we learned that we preferred cash flow streams from rentals over lump sums from the fixers, we started to hold some houses rather than sell them all.   Lastly, we were stationed overseas and were forced to buy at a distance or sit on the sidelines, so we learned how to buy at a distance.  In other words, we were all over the place....I recommend you choose one strategy and learn it well.

Your time in the military will serve you well:  when doing pre-foreclosures, we started marketing to owners in default and systemized processes with checklists that reminded me of my time on active duty, with flowcharts and scripts for talking with sellers, and corresponding file folders.  I made a "Real Estate for Dummies" type of book for us at home to help me get processes in place so that I could hire others out, E-Myth style...we never got that far, as the military moved us again.

Now, we have a written set of parameters we use to determine what houses we want to buy.  I developed my parameters after reading Keller's book Millionaire Real Estate Investor and reading his "best practices."  More recently we've been slowly growing into a buy and hold portfolio...in the future, we will be paying down and then paying off.  

Your W-2 income will help you qualify for conventional loans, and you can use your VA up to 4 units as long as you owner occupy one unit for a period of time. Up to 4 mortgages are reasonably easy and then you'll have to learn other ways to do things. Congratulations on your retirement~ we've got a couple of years to go...