Newbie from Conroe, Texas

[Daniel J.]

I am a complete newbie when it comes to Real Estate Investing in the Conroe, Texas area. For those of you who don't know, Conroe is just North of Houston. We did just purchase our own home, but outside of that, and some reading I have very little knowledge. My ultimate goal is to provide Financial Independence for my family, which the thought of excites me quite a bit. I realize that is quite a ways off, and am under no illusions that REI will make me a millionaire overnight! My first major goal is to provide enough income to supplement what I make at work. As well, to provide a cushion in case I lost or decided to quit my job. I believe I have learned enough to decide that Multi Family is the place to start so as to decrease the risk of the cost of vacancies. I am certainly open to learning about Single Family as well though. As we are young I am extremely interested in creative financing as we will not have our own traditional capitol to provide for quite awhile. I realize this can be a much harder path, but I am willing to put in the sweat equity to make happen. As much as I want to start now, I have no desire to make foolish decisions and lose time and money and jeopardize what we already have. I realize there is inherent risk in REI, but I see no reason to risk unnecessarily or foolishly just because I cannot be patient. I am trying to wade through all the free resources and not ask questions that are already answered if at all possible! It's fantastic that there are so many resources so easily at hand, though my keyword alerts are keeping me off track from reading the books! Any and all advice or nudges or even kicks in the right direction would be appreciated, specific to these areas or just in general.

Thank you for your time!

Daniel

[Jim Cummings]

Daniel. Welcome to the Forum. I've been a REALTOR for 27+ Years, a Property Manager & small time Investor (1-3 Units) for roughly 20 years. if you can find properties with creative or Owner financing, that is certainly something to Investigate. Getting and having SUCCESS with your first property is key.  I'm sure there are vast numbers of people that wanted to be RE Investors that "flamed" out on their first property and gave up, because of Tenant Issues, incorrect financing,being over-leveraged or any number of other horror situations people have gotten themselves into.   

You indicated you just bought your first home, and I presume working on accumulating capital to make your first investment. May I suggest a different strategy for your first property. Recognize there is a DIFFERENT caliber of folks that rent Homes as opposed to Multi-Family. I would recommend you stick with Single Family for your first investment - you are familiar with home ownership, maintenance requirements, etc. Multi-Family will bring you a vast assortment of different more perplexing issues. 

MY recommendation for acquiring your first Investment property: If you've been in your home less than a year - plan on staying 1-2 years. This will satisfy the document you signed at Closing, saying you planned to occupy the property. As this is your FIRST home - it's probably NOT your DREAM Home. After 1-2 years, BUY a new PERSONAL RESIDENCE, and keep your first home as your first Rental Property. You have the benefit of the low Interest rate as a homeowner.Buying a New Residence, you benefit from only having to make a small OWNER OCCUPANT Down Payment, plus the lower interest rate available to Owner Occupants.  Another "tweak" to this approach is look at the financial numbers on your current home and if it makes financial sense , refinance it to a 15-Year Note, and you can get it paid off quicker, which will increase your abilities to leverage your income for future purchases, (10-15 years downstream) or you can make additional Payments to accomplish much the same goal. Making One additional Payment Per year (13 as opposed to 12) will decrease your payoff time from 30 years to slightly over 22 years.

Good luck and happy hunting!