the new guy from Keedysville, MD

[Shaun Sullivan]

Hi, I'm an actuarial analyst from Washington county, MD, working in Frederick.  It's 3am, so I guess I'm supposed to be getting pumped by watching a late-night real estate guru infomercial... but no, here I am joining BP.

My first real estate experience was buying a townhouse in Frederick in 2010, which we refinanced in 2013. Then in spring 2016 we sold the townhouse and bought a SFH in Keedysville. I did a lot of research during all 4 transactions, especially with regard to doing my own detailed comps and crunching the loan numbers like crazy to get break-even points and IRR for various down payments, MI & interest rates, etc.

Recently I've been learning more about the investment-specific side of real estate... listening to some podcasts, reading lots of blog posts & articles, just finished reading the BP ultimate beginner's guide, and now listening to The E-Myth.

I've had the desire for many years to eventually use real estate to produce a long-term passive income stream... mainly with the goal of being able to retire early and increase my retirement funds.

At least while I still have a full time job and young children, I think my primary path would be buy & hold... as long as I have the funds (or access to funds) to make the investments. If it's possible to find profitable properties for flipping or wholesaling without putting in lots of research & marketing hours (ie, just through MLS, word of mouth, etc), and then actually do the flip/sale as a side gig, then I'd be interested in doing that to increase my funds to invest. Of course I'd first need to get the right group of people together to make it happen.

I'd like to take action and start making investments in the first half of 2017.

Right now I'm just trying to learn and start developing relationships with people I can work with on financing, legal/taxes, renovations/repairs contracting, and just finding and analyzing properties.