New Guy in Houston, Texas

[Andrew Taylor]

Hello, all. My name is Andy Taylor (don't say it) and I am a new wanna-be investor from the Houston area (Magnolia, actually, which is 40 or so miles north of Houston proper).

I stumbled onto BiggerPockets.com after a late-night Half-Price Books run that saw me come home with an armload of discounted Rich Dad books while on a recent out-of-town trip. With nothing else to do at the hotel, I plowed through several of the books and am now motivated to fix what ails my financial life.

I started building homes in 2001, and did that full-time until the market here crashed in 2008. I got into the oil & gas industry as a technical writer, and did that full-time until the market crashed in early 2015. (Oddly, I got into home building when I got laid off from the telecommunications industry in 2000 because the market crashed. Clearly if you want to destroy an entire industry, you should hire me right now and then practice your evil laugh until the market, inevitably, crashes.)

After more than a year without full-time work, I'm in no position financially to start investing in real estate...but I'm planning ahead. My plan is to get us out of our current funk, then slowly start investing in small, multi-family units within an hour or so of home. I'd like to own 1 within a year, 3 within 2 years, and 10 within 5 years (disclaimer: that's a first pass at setting some goals, so I reserve the right to modify). I'd like to have enough passive income for both my wife and I to quit our jobs within 10 years (assuming I can get a job in the next 10 years).

My biggest hurdle is going to be convincing my wife, who is very risk-averse, to go along with this. She's a teacher and eligible to retire next year. She's planning to take her pension and then go back to work doing something she's not sick and tired of. Other than her pension, we've got nothing set aside for retirement. I'm playing catch-up now, but I think REI might be a good way to make up some ground.

[Andrew Taylor]

Thanks for the warm welcome, everybody. I'm currently going through some of the eBooks and webinars, and will start in on the Podcasts soon.

For practical education, I've been trying to analyze potential deals that fit into my preferred category (small, multi-family units within an hour or so of home). I'm pretty good at tracking down tax info, but I really need to find a good insurance broker to get a handle on what kind of insurance I need and what it'll cost. A quick feeler I sent out a few days ago came back with a ballpark figure of $200 on a $125k property in a very rural area, which seems high to me - but maybe it's not. No way to know for sure until I take him a specific deal and sit with him to crunch the numbers. Might try to do that tomorrow.

Something else I'm planning on doing in the next couple of days is visiting a local banker or two to introduce myself and interrogate them on what they'll require to make a loan on these kinds of properties - i.e. how much down, what % of rents count toward income, closing costs, etc.

Any other recommendations for my to-do list?