New in Columbus

[Chip Carter]

Hello All,

    My name is Chip and I am looking to find an investment property in Westerville or Dublin.  I am a working class guy--currently working in medical sales.  I live in my hometown north of Youngstown, but I travel all over Ohio on a weekly basis.   

    My only RE experience so far was unfortunately a bad one.  Long story short I speculated on a house in Phoenix that ended up underwater and I had to short sell.  That has led me to the more interesting concept of cash flow investing.  

    Based on my previous experiences, I thought the idea of cash flow investing would be a very frustrating one.  If I had wanted to rent my house in Phoenix with property management, it would have been a monthly loss (hence the short sale).  I am really intrigued by the mathematics BP-type investors are using to calculate cashflow.  If working in corporate America these past years has taught me one thing it is that a 'job' is anything but stable.  

I have been reading some of the recent articles about using an FHA loan and that seems like it might be a good way for me to get in the game (but smart this time). I like the idea of a 'house hack' duplex/triplex/quadplex...stay there for a year, then acquire a new property. I am most interested in the Dublin and Westerville areas because they seem to be developing, but I am hoping to begin building a network and hearing the opinions of others. On the downside though, I am not sure those areas are really duplex/triplex friendly...I haven't really seen any listed and I'm not sure you will get the tenants for them up there.

    Hopefully I will be able to get to the Columbus meetup at the end of April (@brianhayes I think it was?).  I am definitely interested in hearing from others about cashflow investing and the north columbus markets.  So far I have just been looking on realtor.com etc. and I haven't seen anything that really matches up with the math for cash flow investing.  I am hoping to hear others experiences about actually acquiring cash flow properties. 

    Anyhow, thanks for reading and hopefully I get to meet some of you soon!  

[Jared Lichtin]

@Chip Carter- Cbus is a great market, just try your best to network with agents & investors there, and they can help you analyze what a good deal looks like.  I helped my buddy look for a house of his own in Columbus last week, and it was crazy how different the neighborhoods can be next to eachother.  Just do your homework, wait for the right deal, network, and I'm sure you'll do great!