Eager Newbie from Boston

[Daniel Adelman]

Hi Fellow BP Members!

My name is Dan Adelman, I am a 30 year old, recently married, brand new but very eager (aspiring) real estate investor living in Boston, MA (Brighton, specifically), hoping to learn as much as I can and hopefully build a better life for my wife and future family. A good friend of mine (also hoping to get into Real Estate) introduced me to bigger pockets a few months ago and I've been totally hooked ever since---- I am blown away how many amazing resources, from the ultimate beginners guide to all the podcasts, are available to new and eager investors like myself who looking to learn about the real estate business and eventuallyget involved.

A little bit more about myself, my family, and the reasons I'm looking to get into real estate investing. I've worked full time in the medical field ever since graduating college but beginning this fall, I am beginning a full time 3 year graduate school program to become a nurse practitioner. Although this has been a long time goal of mine and I'm incredibly excited about beginning school, I'm also nervous because I've always been the "primary wage earner" between my wife and myself. My wife works in retail and once I'm not working and in school full time, her modest salary will basically only be able cover our essential costs of living: rent, utilities, car insurance, groceries, but virtually nothing else. In the short term, my motivation for getting into real estate is very simple: survival. I am desperate to generate some type "passive" cash flow positive rental income to supplement my money wife's salary to support our family us while I am in school.

Between the two of us and some wedding gifts we have about 35,000$ (maybe a few thousand more for the right opportunity) that we've saved up and we want to put that money to work for us--we want to start investing in real estate. Based on our current situation, age, long term goals, and personality type, I think the "buy and hold" strategy makes the most in sense, and in the immediate future, being able bring in even as little as a few hundred dollars a month of cash flow positive rental income would make enormously helpful in keeping us afloat financially while I'm in school and not working a traditional 40hour/week type of job that I am used to working. I've been listening to the podcasts religiously, and I'm at the very beginning stages of trying to develop business plan, both for the immediate future while I'm in school and then for the longer term once I finish school. If all goes to plan, by this time 3 years from now I'll be graduating and hopefully gainfully employed shortly thereafter.

`By that point, the hope is that we have our foot in the door and a little experience as landlords under our belts with at least one cash flow positive rental property. After that, the basic plan would then be to save as much as possible from the money I earn from my nurse practitioner salary and to add that money to whatever profit we are already generating from our rental property and just reinvest that money into more rental properties and over the next 7-10 years, strategically and systematically growing our investment and rental portfolio. Some loose benchmark goals that I've been come up with and that seem reasonably attainable are: by 5 years from now owning between 5-15 income generating rental units, and by year 10 owning between 20-40 units, hopefully generating at least 250-300k between my salary and our rental properties. At that point, who knows! It goes without saying that a lot will happen over the next decade, both planned and unplanned, but I'm hoping at point we could either go in 1 of 2 directions: a) either we go ALL IN with real estate, with either 1 or both of us leaving our full-time jobs to focus on real estate or b) we focus to putting together a reliable property management team in place, so we can reap the long term benefits of real estate investing without all the day-to-day 24/7 responsibilities of land lording.

Now the questions I have are: how do I get there and what steps do I need to put in place? Assuming these goals seem reasonable and attainable to all of you seasoned investors, I guess I'm wondering where (and to a lesser extent, when) I should begin? I'm thinking it make sense to try and look for a Duplex/Triplex/Quad in the Boston area, fix it up if necessary, and rent those out those units. If I understand correctly, anything less than 5 units would still be considered a single family home and therefore we could qualify for an FHA-type loan for those type of properties. Is this correct? Is this math is right? In theory, would our 35,000 of savings that is earmarked as our real estate start up money @ 3.5% be able to purchase a duplex/trip/quad of up to a million dollars? (mind you, 1 million in this area doesn't even go that far but I digress....) If my math incorrect and I would need more money, I'd love to know about how large of a downpayment we would need to purchase million dollar-is duplex/trip/quad. And, lastly, if it would require significantly more than 35,000k, what are some of best ways of looking for additional funding aside from asking family or friends for a loan (not an option at the moment).

I have all these questions, as well as million more, and I'd love some guidance and advise along the way. This site and the thousands of experienced investors here willing and able to share their knowledge and experience with others is truly incredible. I'd love to especially reach out to those of you in the Boston/Eastern Mass area. If anybody from around here is up for it, I'd love to connect with ... maybe we could meet up for coffee (my treat of course) and I can pick your brain? I'm still relatively now to this site but in eager to learn. I'm not sure what the preferred mode of connecting/networking between BP users is, but if its email, please reach out to me I'm happily provide my personal email address. Sorry for the unusually long post and for those of you who read all the way to the end, I really appreciate it!

I am SO excited to become part of this incredible online community and I look forward to hopefully speaking with some of you soon!

Dan