New member from Utrecht, The Netherlands!

[Bas Land]

Hi all! Let me introduce myself on these forums!

I'm Bas, a 23 year old guy from Utrecht, the beautiful city in the center of The Netherlands, about 30 minutes from Amsterdam. Since about three years ago I'm really interested in personal finance and financial indepence. Since I started working two years ago I've been saving and investing my money in the stock market, in a few broadly diversified and cheap index funds diversifying over the US, UK and continental Europe as recommended by almost all personal finance experts.

I earn a living as a business consultant, advising clients about and helping them implement information systems, financial/management reporting, and how to automate this process.

I've gotten interested in real estate investing because it is a little more hands-on than the financial markets, plus the tax system in Holland is very REI-friendly (we basically pay no tax on our rental income). Also, since you can leverage your investment in properties, returns can potentially be higher. Through this interest I started to Google and found Biggerpockets. I subscribed to the podcast on iTunes and listen to it every week since. Since I travel a lot as a consultant I try to use that time to catch up with the podcasts.

My original plan was to keep dumping my money into the markets and in a year or 5 buy my first property when my nest egg is large enough for a down payment (typically 30% on an investor's mortage). However I found a partner that is willing to help me get into the real estate market a little sooner than that through a combined deal that I will talk about in another post in the deal analysis forum.

I already own an apartment in the city, where I currently live. It's a nice place, in a really new (2012) building (so no big mainenance), and also I got really lucky with the market conditions, both buying near the bottom of the Dutch real estate market, and right at the bottom of the interest market. This means my costs of living are low through a small mortagage (1.9% 30 year mortage 10 year fixed interest rate). But it also exposes me to some appreciation and capital gains since the real estate market is rising again and the city of Utrecht itself is booming already. 

I'm looking forward to meeting people here and learning a lot!

Cheers,

Bas