New member targeting Tampa Bay area and Long Island, NY

[Peter Lampione]

Hi, my wife Dina and I have recently started looking at REI as an option for producing cash flow as income replacement. We are in our mid 40s so, basically coming to this late in life. We have no direct experience in REI but have lots of other experience in banking, finance and project management we are hoping will help us push forward. We have been reading a lot of books and blogs, listening to a lot of podcasts, and we've decided it is time to take the plunge and jump into the conversation.

Our goal is to buy and hold multi-family properties for cash flow (keeping the required rehab manageable until we get more experience). We have the money to invest, but need to develop a team, continue to learn, and build a funnel to ultimately find good deals. We live in Nassau county on Long Island, NY and have been discovering it is a tough market to find deals. In looking for alternatives, we have chosen the Tampa Bay Area to focus on, primarily because we have ‘boots on the ground’ and some familiarity with the location. My parents live nearby in Bradenton, and my sister is going to move there next summer and will handle property management for us. Her husband is a licensed contractor so he will be our handyman. (We will continue looking at Long Island, even though it is a tough market, just in case we get lucky.)

We are focused on learning, researching target markets, and building our team/network. We just went to our first REI meetup on Long Island and had a great experience. We are going to be in the Tampa / Bradenton / Sarasota area the week of Christmas and will look for meet ups there. In addition to meet ups we are looking for opportunities to network with people 1 on 1, to expand our relationships and find contacts to build our team.

There is a lot to learn and it sometimes feels overwhelming (and given the current market it feels as though our timing is bad and finding deals may be near impossible), but the forums, blogs, books, and podcasts here have been a huge help. Thanks to everyone in the BP community for all the help you've given us already. We have lots of questions and will post them on the forum as we go.

Thanks,

Peter