Greetings from a newcomer, Joe Hoot

[Joseph Hoot]

Hi all! M name is Joseph Hoot. I currently live in the Buffalo, NY area and am moving to Roswell, GA area in the spring/early summer with my wife and two kids. I am on the IT industry, currently working for the state of New York university system and am looking for work in GA. My wife is an elementary school teacher, who is fed up with the education system. So our current plan is to support our day-to-day living off of my salary and allow her to go full steam into multi-family investments. We'll be in the area in March to visit, look for IT job opportunities for me, search out a potential primary residence for my family, and also look at investment opportunities. We have a lot going on, so I'm not sure it will be possible to touch base with anyone here, but if you live in that area and might be interested in talking more about how we might begin this journey, I'd be open to trying to meet with you. I am a handy guy. So our current hope is to find something in the GRM range of 4-7 that might need a little bit of love. We have some funds, but would be interested in understanding more about leveraging hard money. I've done a lot of reading and understand some of the basics with GRM, NOI, cap rates, cash on cash, pro forma's, etc... But we don't yet understand a lot about leveraging private investor dollars to make it a win/win for all. If you have any advise or suggestions for me, please toss them my way. I'll go ahead and say "Thank you" in advance. In any case, hello and I'm glad to be able to discuss more about real estate in this forum! Also, I'm a home Brewer who's looking for a good Ellysian IPA clone recipe, if you know of any :) Cheers! Joe

[Alisa O.]

Welcome to BP! 

You might want to house hack as your first project in GA, especially if your funds are limited and you are the only one with a W2 in your household. If you search in the top right corner "house hacking" you will find a lot of good information. 

Without prior experience hard money will be not impossible, but hard to come by. You need to answer a question of why anyone would lend to you without prior experience. The fact that you can fix a few things around the house doesn't mean that you can finish a renovation project on time, within budget and sell/refinance the property to pay off the lender. You need to have a fantastic deal with very strong numbers for the hard money lender to lend you. You will not only need to know the numbers for the rehab, but strong knowledge of the area so you are able to project the future sale/refinance price of your project. This knowledge comes with time and lots of questions answered. Join local BP meetup, landlord association, other real estate related groups and attend consistently and constantly. 

Good luck, 

Alisa