Hello BP community. My name is Spencer and I officially became a landlord in the Southwest Chicago Suburbs as of a month ago. My business partner and I just closed on a Duplex in the West Joliet area.

I haven't been very active on the forums, but have been researching diligently all the goodies this community has to offers for the past 3 1/2 years. By profession, I am a Chief Building Operating Engineer for a large, well established, privately held company in the Chicagoland Western Suburbs. For those of you who have no clue what an operating engineer is, basically I'm responsible for maintaining, managing, and repairing the companies 700K + Sq. Ft. of Commercial/ Industrial class A & B properties, encompassing but not limited to HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Pneumatic, Roofing, Fire Alarm & Protection, EM power, Data Centers, and Building Automation systems on a day to day basis.

The light bulb came on for me 3 years ago pertaining to the fact I possess a very unique set of skills, resources, & training/ experience that most investors have to outsource, which to this point has given me a huge advantage during my recent property acquisition & purchase experiences. Seems counter intuitive to start out with residential MFR investing considering the majority of my experience is with commercial properties, but this path, and particularly the recent deal we acquired, was set-up to be stable & cash flowing from day one. My biz partner and I plan on finding a four to eight plex after we finish re-positioning the property we just purchased, and continue to purchase properties MFR's every 2 to 3 years (Funding & Economics Dependent). Eventually I would like to transition into the Apartment complex/ Commercial/ Industrial types of investments since that is my specialty. I've also contemplated offering my experience and knowledge to other investors for property & building systems evaluations/ assessments/ consulting (Energy Efficiency/ Advanced Operating Strategies/ IAQ/ DDC).

Enough about me, time to give credit where credit is due. First off, Josh, Brandon, and the other BP team members really have created a truly amazing platform for everything RE investor related. My real motivator & confidence builder has been the podcasts, very inspiring & informative. The BP member contributors to the blog articles have also helped me big time in my journey of figuring this whole RE investing realm out. And lastly, Ben Leybovich's Cash Flow Freedom university is worth every penny! As many of you know he has a very unique & knowledgeable perspective regarding Buy N' Hold investing, and the ability to purchase the highlights of his knowledge and experience in one easy to use format is priceless to someone like myself. The BP eBook on Managing Rental Properties has been extremely insightful and helpful, definitely recommend that book to anyone who's looking to start Buy & Hold investing.

Lastly, if anyone in the Chicago Southwest suburbs (Joliet) has any good attorney recommendations and/ or experiences, I'm all ears.

Thanks for reading guys!