Hola, Investor from Northwest Arkansas (cue up the banjo music)

[Max Shaw]

Hello fellow real estate junkies,

I have been lurking on the site for a while now, shamelessly devouring as much information as I can possibly digest. I'm currently a single family home investor with a steady day job selling frozen food to Walmart here in NWA (Northwest Arkansas). Right now I have 5 properties with an accepted contract for numero 6. This one will be my very first short sale and I'm very fired up about the deal I'm getting. I'm using traditional financing through a local bank that I have a really good relationship with. That being said, I still have to put 25% down like any average Joe Blow off the street. It's just nice that they have all of my information on hand and I don't have to really update anything. Here is were I dive into how I got started with investing, my goals, and how I plan to get there. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst, wait wrong story. So, here I was in college living in a rental house with some buddies. I was broke like any other typical college kid and I thought to myself, "What if I bought a house and had my boys pay me rent?". I did some quick math, it worked out to me living for basically just monthly utility bills. How can a broke college kid get a loan you ask? Well in 2003 they just gave money to pretty much anyone with a pulse. So that worked out to my benefit and the seed was planted. 

Next phase, the miss-step. Looking back I could have handled this sooooo much better, but hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I bought my first home right, FSBO, negotiated them down and got a great deal for the time. The house needed some updating, which I did. I graduated, got a real job and decided I was rich and I needed to sell, which I did, for top dollar in 2006. I sold the house for roughly 30k more then I paid, and here's where I think I messed up. I bought a really nice house, new, at the top of the market. Looking back what I should have done was basically the same thing I did before. I'm pretty handy, so fixing up things comes naturally and I really enjoy the satisfaction of taking less than perfect things and fixing them up. Had I done this I could have generated more equity rather than take a hit just like everyone else when the market went south. Silver lining for me, not so much the person that bought my first home, that home hasn't really recovered and is worth far less than I sold it for to this day, 1 point me. So here I am with a nice new home, that I can't really do much with, right? Wrong. Because I did make so much money on the 1st property, and I dumped it back into my new home for the down payment (as opposed to buying a sweet car or going to Vegas with), I was able to rent this property for a slight cash flow profit, and being new, it didn't have many issues. That was 4 years ago, same awesome tenants, no major issues, house is back above water.

Over the last 4 years I have been quasi "house hacking" (hopefully I don't have to pay any type of royalties to use that term) buying homes that are less than appealing, fixing them up, renting them for top dollar, and moving on to the next. But, the game has recently changed due to all of my loans and my new wife. Now I have to put 25% down, and the wife likes nice homes, not fixer uppers. The best part about the first 4 homes is I was able to purchase them all for around 20k out of pocket and they all cash flow nicely. My ultimate goal is to own 30 homes free and clear, how am I gonna get there?

Well my wife and I both have pretty solid jobs, and we are able to save enough for a house roughly every 8 months. Once I acquire 10 properties I will begin to snowball the loan with the lowest amount until it is paid for, than buy a new property. With each loan that becomes free and clear, my cash flow will increase and I will be able to purchase homes much more rapidly. I'm trying to keep no more then 10 notes at any one time so I do not have to be overly creative with my financing. Its a pretty simple plan and seems to be on schedule as of right now. However,  I'm always learning and remain a student of real estate investing.

As far as my day to day operations are concerned, the information on this site has proved invaluable. The podcasts are phenomenal and always entertaining, Brandon and Josh crack me up. The amount of knowledge all of the members possess is incredible and gives me something to strive for in terms of being a true subject matter expert in the future. 

Any who, if you made it all the way down here I'd say you can make it through just about any article posted on the dadgum internets and I thank you for your time ladies and gents.

Thanks again,

Max