New Member - Philadelphia, PA Area

[Michael Scheerer]

Hi! My name is Mike Scheerer, and I’d like to get more active in the BiggerPockets Community so I can build relationships with other investors and real estate professionals that have the the same passion for real estate investing. The ultimate goal is to get out of the analysis paralysis phase, learn from others, and start doing deals.

To give you a little bit of information about myself:

Background:

I graduated from West Chester University with Honors receiving dual degrees in Finance & Economics and upon graduating, started my career as a Risk Management Consultant at PwC in Philadelphia. Shortly after graduation I bought my first property (in Manayunk, PA) with plans to house hack it and turn it into a rental property. I loved it, and I knew Real Estate investing was going to be in my future. I had the finance and economics degrees to help me understand the numbers side of the business (which I love), but I didn’t know much about Real Estate itself. Ever since, I pick up every book and/or article I can find, listen to podcasts (BiggerPockets being my favorite), and read through all of the information on BP so I can to educate myself about this industry. I got to a point where I wanted to steer myself in a direction that I was passionate about…

…I decided to leave PwC and started a new career with a large luxury home builder, NV Homes. I wanted to learn the business from the ground up, literally. I was a project manager for NV Homes and managed the development of over $50 million in luxury residential properties. This was a very challenging job, but it gave me the knowledge I was seeking to create a foundation for my career in real estate. At that point in my career, I still had some work to do to get to where I wanted to be. I look at real estate as a four-legged stool with financing, education, construction, & sales as being the four legs of supportive knowledge. Knowing this, I left NV Homes to become a Realtor to learn the sales side of Real Estate. This is my current role and I thoroughly enjoy it. 

Investing Experience:

As I mentioned, I house hacked my way into my first rental when I was 23 coming out of college. I used an FHA loan with 3.5% down and a 3.5% interest rate. It is a 5 bedroom 3 full bath house in Manayunk, PA which is a great rental area. Contractually, I had to live in the house for a year before making it a rental. I lived in the basement and rented out all the bedrooms to friends. This was a great learning experience for me and solidified my desire to be in this world. It generated gross yearly income of about $32,500 and maintained significant net cash flow and above standard returns on my cash invested. In the second year, I converted it to a full rental and hired a property management group to manage the day to day operations. I still own this property and I still benefit from roughly $500 a month net cash flow after management fees and reserves for items such as capital expenditures and vacancy.

That being said, there’s one big problem….I haven’t done any more investing since buying this property! I’d like for that to change, and that’s why I am here. There’s nothing better than a community of like-minded individuals and I look forward to growing together and learning from this community.