New to BP, Real Estate, and Kansas City

[Greg Davis]

Hi everyone,

I am hitting the new member trifecta today. I am new to real estate investing, Biggerpockets, and Kansas City (I’ve been living here for over 4 hours now!) I’ve spent the past two years working as a structural engineer and I am moving to Kansas City to further my engineering career. I have been planning to move for several months and have used that time to build my foundational knowledge regarding investing, real estate, and business. Many people on the site and several authors have mentioned using local libraries to gain access to hundreds of great real estate and business books and I have taken full advantage of those resources. I highly recommend it to anyone who is in a similar position and looking to get up to speed by learning the basics. I have learned a tremendous amount over the past 6 months of studying and while I sure am I still have much to learn, I fully believe I know enough to start and I am ready to jump in and take massive action.

To start out, I am planning to find a small multi-family property in order to house hack or combine my personal residence with my investment. I am planning to use an FHA loan to put 3.5% down and save the rest of my capital for renovations and additional properties with traditional financing. My ultimate goal is to obtain financial freedom within the next 10 yrs by investing in small multi-family properties (and single family residence's when the deal and the numbers make sense) and trading up to larger properties as I gain more experience and capital.

I have worked hard to get my ducks in a row so that when I got to Kansas City I could hit the ground running. I have solid cash reserve set aside to invest and my credit is in great shape. I should be able to afford putting a down payment on 2-3 properties with using (1) FHA loan and traditional financing for the rest in my first year, if I can find deals where the numbers work (and my debt to income ratio is acceptable). Due to my engineering background and the skills I have acquired, I feel very confident in my ability to handle basic home repairs myself and I have made a few connections with various skilled tradesmen to assist in rehab projects I may encounter.

Being new to Kansas City, I believe my first step in starting out is familiarize myself with the area. To that end, I would love to meet local investors and real estate professionals working in the area. Looking around the site, I a found fantastic post by Chirs Dawson about zip codes in Kansas City, MO (shout-out to him, great resource!) I wanted to ask the community here if anyone was aware of local Biggerpockets meetups or REIAs that would be open to new investors who are hungry to learn more about real estate. I was able to find a couple of pages listing Kansas Real Estate Investment Clubs and Missouri Real Estate Investment Clubs and I will be sure to check those out. If I missed any or anyone is aware of others please let me know, I would be excited to hear from you. Also, if you’re not local to Kansas City but would still like to talk about real estate, investing, or any other related topics, send me a message and I would happy to speak with you.

Last but certainly not least, to those of you who are still here with me reading this, this shout-out is for you. I truly admire people who finish what they start whether the task is big or small, kudos to you. I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you using some of it to read my post. I am so excited to get started and to meet, connect with, learn from, and aid in your pursuits and endeavors however I can while I’m on this investing journey.