New member - Investor friendly agent, ready to invest. advice

[Kelsey Marshall]

Hi BP,

My name is Kelsey. I am a Realtor located in Philadelphia who is ready to start investing in my own deals. For the past three years I have been working part-time as an agent while also a student at Temple studying real estate finance. I came across BP a while back but just recently started listening to all of the podcast and finally decided to join the site.

After taking a re investment finance course at school this past semester, my eyes were opened to the potential of investing. As a final project we were all tasked with putting together a sample commercial investment deal then presenting it to the class. My partner and i had to do a market analysis from international to local level, predict the value of our property (a mixed-use building) using noi, and cap rates derived from several methods, calculate before and after-tax cash flows, npv,  irr, rules of thumb etc. then decide to accept or reject the project. 

Working on this project, listening to bigger pockets podcast 24/7, combined with the experience I have as an agent has finally given me the confidence to jump into one my own deals. 

I am currently speaking with the owner of a 5-unit in Mt. Airy who has expressed interest in selling and told me to"make him an offer". I decided to put together a small version of what I did for my project (just numbers) to present to my potential lenders and money partners since I don't have a track record to show for investing at the moment, just brokered deals.  Thoughts on this? Should I tie up the property before i know I will be able to finance the deal? Based on everything I've learned from the bp podcast the answer is yes (lol), but I am still unsure for some reason. Especially because I am licensed. As far as I know disclosure is king, but you never know there may be a hidden rule out there. Can anyone provide any insight?

Thanks,