Newbie from the suburbs of Buffalo, NY

[John W Sheffer Jr]

Hello everyone! My name is John Sheffer. I am from Eden NY, a small town about a half an hour south of Buffalo NY. I have no experience in real estate investing but am eager to learn. I have been working in the construction industry as a bricklayer for the past 19 years. My father who, has been in business for 35 years owns the company. It has been a blessing for me in many ways. One of the biggest ways is being able to question other trades on job sites about work I am doing on my own home. I really enjoy the feeling of accomplishment, and pride for the work that I do. With that said, I don’t think that my quality of life will be very good if I continue to abuse my body the way that I do and I want to be able to enjoy my retirement. That is a big part of why for several years now I have been lazily contemplating getting into the business of rental properties. I have noticed how so many of the companies that we do work for have rental properties and have taken note of how their wealth has grown.

So, what has finally kicked me in the butt to no longer “lazily contemplate”?

My wife and I have had our first child (he is two now) and we are outgrowing our house. Although I never aspired to be a rental property owner for SFRs after putting the numbers together I thought that maybe our house could be the starting point for us. That thought made me do what so many others out there do. Go to Google. Google then brought me to Brandon Turners book “ The Book on Rental Property Investing” (listening to it for the third time), which lead to the BP podcast, which lead me to “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” which has fired me up. Right now my thirst for knowledge has not been quenched. I have been downloading books and listening to podcasts like crazy. I hope to gain knowledge and wisdom from all here that are wiling to share and eventually I hope to be one of the many success stories here on BP.

Cheers! John