Noob from Gallatin TN

[Brad Taylor]

Hi all! I am new to BP and wanted to introduce myself, but first I wanted to say how excited I am to have found this website. I actually found it through searching for podcasts to listen to while I mow my 5 acres. There seems to be a wealth of information here that I haven't even scratched the surface to.

I am a real estate lover who hasn't had the opportunity to fully scratch that itch just yet. I work full time as an engineer, so my career has been my main focus up to this point.

I purchased my first house in 2004 (and paid top dollar to a flipper). I wanted to buy a fixer, but I (and by "I" I mean my wife :)) knew that my time was non-existent to actually work on the property. So we moved into a house that needed nothing.

In 2013 we found a foreclosure through the homepath website and fell in love. It looked like I would be buying $40k in equity at closing, so we couldn't go wrong! 

During the transition, I became an accidental landlord, which has been a good experience because I was blessed with perfect tenants. There is a long story behind how this happened, and I won't go into the detail here. But the short story is if you are considering homepath financing I would give it a lot of consideration!!!

Both properties have appreciated considerably in the past two years because real estate is going bananas in Nashville right now!! So I am trying to educate myself on REI and patiently decide how I want to proceed. I would still like to flip, but am concerned that values could easily start going the other way, so there seems to be a lot of risk.

Thanks in advance for all the answers to questions I may have in the future.