Investor from San Francisco looking for commercial multifamily nationwide

[Ryan W.]

I'm a relative newbie investor with a small portfolio in Colorado Springs, CO (4plex, SFR, condo). I'm looking to make the jump to commercial multifamily, preferably something I can add significant value to over the next year or two. I'm a self-employed web developer, so I can go anywhere in the country in search of deals. Right now I'm looking at Texas, Colorado, and Ohio.

Enough rambling...looking forward to networking here :-)

[Ryan W.]

Dick,

Thanks for the response. Got into real estate for several reasons:

1. My extended family owns hundreds of rental units in a small town in Indiana. Fifteen years ago, they were all working the graveyard shift at a potato chip factory (not kidding). Now they're millionaires. They're not brilliant business minds and haven't done anything amazing; just bought crummy-but-cashflowing rentals and kept on buying.

2. My dad is a general contractor and has owned his own small business for more than 10 years. He makes a decent living, but my parents have never bought real estate, not even the house they live in. They're getting close to 50 and have pretty much nothing to show for thirty years of very hard work.

3. My wife's dad is a very high ranking military officer. For the last thirty years, they've bought real estate in each of their new assignments and then kept them as rentals when they moved. They've worked hard to pay the properties off and now they've got a tremendous amount of equity and cashflow on which to retire. And it wasn't even that difficult for them.

All of these things have convinced me of several things:

1. Ownership and control of cashflowing assets is what separates the rich from the poor.

2. Real estate isn't rocket science; many ordinary people have achieved extraordinary wealth just by sticking to a basic plan over a long period of time.

3. Someone who started young and really put 100% of their effort and energy into this could *really* achieve extraordinary results. I'm not talking the 7-8 figure results that my extended family has achieved, but 9-10 figure results.

So that's why I'm in real estate :-)