New investor in Albany, New York

[Ajay Keluskar]

Hello all, Firstly I would like to say thank you for all of the insight that I have consumed over the last few months while I considered taking the plunge into this incredible field. Now a bit of history on myself. I am 28 years old and grew up downstate New York. My parents own two mixed use buildings in a rough part of Brooklyn and I have watched them really enjoy the fruits of the boom in property prices in the area. These buildings each which has two residential units and one commercial units went from 150k in 1993 to some asking us to sell for 1.5 million for each building. While growing up I helped my dad with the usual landlord jobs when it came to painting, plumbing, hanging shelving, or the worst one cleaning after an eviction. He is an electrician by trade and I have picked up a lot from him in that field and also other skills that is just on the job landlord training. Recently the family business in one of the mixed use commercial areas suffered a fire and we had to move the entire business to the vacant commercial property in the other building. Thankfully the fire was on a Sunday and no one was hurt and the tenant properties were mostly unscathed thanks to the commercial property having a metal ceiling above the drop ceiling. Talk about fire rated ceiling. After the transition I took the job of renovating the old site to make a new medical office. I went through the process of demolition, getting plans drawn up, getting contractor bids, getting permits, dealing with subcontractors and finally having the work inspected and now I am just waiting on the final inspections to come through to I can put the place up for rent. This was a monumental project for me but very eye opening. I am now recently engaged and have partially moved up to the capital region and am looking for a new project. The city has a group of city owned properties for between 5k and 15k that are in need of ground up rehab. It's called the Albany Land Bank and has a catalog of homes that they took possession of mostly because they had become so distressed they were destroying the neighborhoods. As far as funding goes I have around 50k liquid right now and a pretty good credit score and my parents are always willing to cosign with me if necessary. I have been looking into buying one of the multi family buildings and putting it back into rental shape and be able to continue and do it over and over to help these neighborhoods not only have great affordable rental opportunities but also to have a brighter future that I can be a part of. As far as financing goes I have been looking into the 203k FHA loans and then refinance with something more concrete when the property is rehabbed. If anyone has any experience with these I would greatly appreciate the input. As far as end goal is concerned I would like to have 10 rental properties by the time I am 35 and a decent enough understanding of the industry to possibly start my own property management business. I am very open to advice and offering my own experiences here. I look forward to the future. Ajay