"New" investor trying again

[Ian Skelton]

Hello BP. Ian Skelton from Savannah, GA

I've been "investing" (notice the quotes) for about 12 years, but didn't know what I was doing. So long story, short it went fairly badly. From calls at 2am to unlock the house because the tenants were drunk and locked themselves out to a call to "let me know" there was water bubbling up from under the sidewalk out front (yep, that was expensive). By 2016 I was fed up with it and sold my rental and got out of real estate. 

But... It pulled me back in... I cooled off for about 6 months and thought about it and decided that people do make money in real estate so I must be doing "something" wrong. I started reading everything I could find (which includes BP - where were you in 2005?). Well, I figured out that I wasn't doing "something" wrong, I was doing everything wrong. I didn't know how to analyze, or screen tenants or better yet hire a property manager to take care of that for me. I didn't know about cash flow or hundreds of other things. 

So... I have just closed on my "first" (since I started over) property. And we'll see if I have actually learned anything...