New Member living in Bellevue, WA with ties to Hawaii

[Lacey N.]

Hi Everyone! I love real estate, and at a recent real estate meetup here in Bellevue, I was motivated to look further into multi-family residences, something my husband and I looked into about a year ago, but thought the Seattle marketplace (and Hawaii) was ridiculous, and that we'd lose our shirts on the investment.  After the meetup and reading through a lot of the forum posts, I'm thinking its more about making smart selections and decisions.

My husband and I currently own 4 different properties - a condo, a SFH (which is under construction to be our primary residence), and two student housing townhouses. We've owned, rented, and sold 3 other properties, so I'm not completely new to the game, but I still feel like I have *so* much to learn! I was born and raised in HI, but currently live in Seattle (Bellevue).

We're always looking for good investment deals, to make good connections with others who are like-minded, and to learn about the strategies others use to build their real estate portfolio (I find it hard to believe that EVERYONE here is somehow coming up with the 25% down on each property they buy, which is what I'm used to the traditional banks we've talked to when we looked into financing options asking for).  I'm looking forward to engaging further through this site.

Aloha!

[Greg Harriman]

Hi Lacey and welcome to the BP community!

My wife and I are in a very similar boat to you and your husband in that we own 5 properties (3 of which are in the Seattle area and 2 others in Arizona).  We moved to Bothell from the Phoenix area and along with it have acquired additional investments along the way.  I have always saved up enough to put 25% down on a property and never attempted to use HELOCs or other creative financing in order to get into a property.  I'd like to think I'm fairly driven and take calculated risks but at-heart I'm a very risk-adverse person.

I'm curious to hear, what are you looking to learn from BP and what are your end goals?  I think knowing that will help you develop a gameplan and determine whether or not that goal is something that's obtainable by acquiring more real estate locally or having to search elsewhere.

Best of luck to you and your husband!