New guy in Salem Oregon

[KP Pawley]

Hey everybody,

I've been lurking on BP for a few weeks and am addicted to the podcast. I've also been hitting the webinars every week since I signed up.

Here's the deal- My wife and I have good jobs working for her family's business. We own a nice suburban house and don't have kids yet. The thing is, we want more.

I want to have more control over our lives and our finances. I'm tired of using my back and my time instead of my brain and my money to provide an income. Before I really dig into that, however, we want to travel.

The plan is to sell our assets and drive a truck and camper around the world. After selling off our house, our stocks, and her car we'll have between $200k and $250k.

We'll need about $1500/mo to fund our trip, but I don't want to just draw from a savings/checking account. Stocks are too volatile and aren't as easy or safe to leverage. They also don't provide the income that real-estate can.

I'm interested in purchasing a small-medium sized multi-family property. From what I can gather COC returns of 12%-20% aren't unheard of. This would be plenty to fund our trip while allowing our net worth to slowly grow while we're gone.

After a few years of travel I'll return and use the equity to invest in more property and begin to build my portfolio.

I know I'm crazy, so I don't have to ask. However, what have I missed/overlooked? Is this even possible? It seems to me that it is, but I have no previous REI experience.

I love looking over the numbers and analyzing deals. I have a management and economics background so I'm comfortable, if unacquainted with, the financial concepts particular to REI.

I'm in Salem Oregon and am open to nearly anything that can get me some experience and help me learn. Deals/Partnerships/Advice/Warnings, anything. I would love to get together with someone local and pick their brains about what works for them and to take any advice that's offered.

Thanks,

K Pawley

[Ben Andrews]

@KP Pawley Welcome to the world of introductions! Sounds like a great plan if you ask me - I'm also a big fan of travel. I'm not familiar with your market up there, but you should get in touch with some local investors up there that know the multi-family space. You could also start running the numbers on listed properties in your area just to get a feel for it and see what the numbers are for your area. 

@J Scott wrote a great blog post outlining the various metrics used to analyze a property. Check it out here.

-Ben