Newbie from Chesterfield, VA

[Blake Brown]

Hi all of BP forums,

My name is Blake Brown and I am currently 18 and in my first year of college. I am attending my local community college while working as a pizza delivery driver in hopes to save up enough money to start investing in real estate. I also have around 13K sitting in a college fund that my parents were able to keep since I attended a community college first instead of a traditional 4 year college. I plan on attending the University of Virginia to get a degree in statistics as I want to be an actuary. I started getting interested in real estate my senior year of high school when I forgot a book for my English class and picked a random one of the shelf of my sports marketing class. This book happened to be Rich Dad Poor Dad! I loved this book because of the idea of making passive income by owning rental properties and escaping the rat race. My future goal is to end up retiring early and living off my rental properties. Another goal of mine has always been to be a millionaire and now I want to own enough properties to get me to this point. I would like to know if this would be an achievable goal through real estate? I would also like to know would it be better to wait until I am older and out of college to save up some money from my actuary job or should I look in to get a place in a year or so with the money I make from my delivery job and the college fund I have in the Charlottesville area to start growing my portfolio? I like the idea of purchasing a duplex, triplex or quadplex with an FHA loan so I don't have to put much down on it and that I would basically be living rent free. Is this a good plan for my first property? As of now I have listened to the first 12 podcasts and plan on listening to them all, read the ultimate beginners guide, and purchased a couple of books that were recommended on this website. The books I purchased are Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I plan further diving into the information from these forums to see what they have to offer. Also that is my little cousin in my profile picture in case any of you were wondering. Sorry about the long post! I look forward to hearing your advice.         

[Chris Lounsbury]

Hey Blake Brown congratulations on finding this site and getting an interest in real estate investing as early as you have. Definitely don't wait to get started on your real estate education at the very least. The more you learn now, the easier it will be later. Also I would strongly suggest continuing to put money away while you learn, so when you're ready to make the leap you have a great nest egg to get you started. Thats one thing I struggled to do when I went away to college, and it was a little more difficult to buy that first property after I graduated.

Charlottesville is a tricky area to find any real value opportunities right now, but look on zillow, trulia, realtor, craigslist daily and you may find something eventually. If you expand your search to 30 minutes outside of Charlottesville, there are a bunch of places begging for investors to fix them up. Also, just looking at properties and running numbers on them will get you far more comfortable with the process and prepare you for when you do find that perfect one.

Best of luck to you, and if you ever have any questions or need any help feel free to reach out.