New from New Jersey

[Donald Dienst]

Hello, I am new to bigger pockets but from what I've seen it's it looks like a very good resource. So I thought I'd introduce myself and what I'm hoping to do.

At the risk of saying too much I'll start with the bio of my real estate background and then go into what I'm hoping to do now. I've always been into real estate in from an early age and back in the 80s I would stay up late to watch the infomercials and the people selling their real estate courses. Then when I was in my early 20s, my father who I was living with bought a one room shack with two enclosed porches on the river for $35,000 as that's all he could afford. Over the course of the next 10 years as he could afford to buy materials I remodeled the house into a two bedroom shotgun home.

During this time with my sisters help who became an agent Michigan I bought my first no money down deal with the Nodoc loan and the owner taking back second position mortgage. The house was north of Detroit and I had no money to fix it up but I did manage to make it work as a rental until the housing market collapse which did not end well. During the good time I owned that house I became aware of a house down the street from my father's in NJ. It was owned by a little old lady with 1 million cats, a hoarding problem and no heat but she kept the outside immaculate and the house had a lot of hidden charm.

Learning from the previous two properties, I bought this one for $75,000 plus rehab with a 203K loan and fixed it up myself before moving in. By that point I had a real job.  Then a number of years ago it flooded three times in two years which I rehabbed each time just in time for the next flood. After which I then bought a young house all cash in Michigan which is working out well as a rental. So some lessons learned. Now after rebuilding my credit from the market crash I feel I am ready to enter rehabbing as an official business as a sideline to my main job.

What I'm doing now is preparing by learning all I can and hopefully getting better advice than I did from the TV in the 80s. I just formed, in New Jersey where I live, an LLC and plan to form a wrapper Michigan LLC for the Michigan property that will be owned by the New Jersey LLC. I also plan to utilize my programming skills to create a business website with an Intranet for managing the properties and flips and dealing with communications etc. This is mostly done now. I am also putting together a professional looking business plan as I am most definitely going to need financing, investors, or a corporate line of credit.

Any advice?