Longterm Buy and Hold Investor in South Korea

[Wade Chilcoat]

Hi, everyone!

My name is Wade and this is my first post to this site. This month I celebrated my 44st birthday and my 1st wedding anniversary. My wife and I live in Daejeon, South Korea where she works helping to conduct clinical drug trials for a Danish pharmaceutical company, and I teach English at a local university. I have been living in Korea since 2002 and just started to seriously get into real estate investing in January of 2016. My wife and I plan to return to the USA in early 2019, possibly settling near Princeton, New Jersey.

I kind of stumbled into real estate back in 1999 by happenstance. I was living in New York City and would cringe every time I would see most of my paycheck evaporate each month after paying someone else the privilege for living in a shoebox. I started researching my options and discovered that a mortgage would actually be a little cheaper than NYC rents, so I bought a cheap $70k co-op out in Astoria before the place became gentrified with hipsters and sushi restaurants. When I moved to Korea in 2002, I found a local RE agent to help rent out my place while I lived abroad. Little would I know that in fourteen years that little one-bedroom co-op would generate about $140k in cashflow and I'm now about to close on it for $280k. After seeing how much more profitable RE can be to my teaching job, I decided to jump in with both feet in January of 2016. After some convincing, I got my wife an board as well.

In the past year-and-half, I have bought seven SFH's through a turnkey company and hope to use a 1031 exchange to purchase three more through the sale of my NYC co-op this fall. I currently have three Fannie Mae mortgages, and hope to get my final seven Fannie Mae's next year when I do cash-out refinances on the three homes from the 1031. When my wife and I return to the USA in early 2019, I want to start getting ten Fannie Mae's under her name until we have maxed out our total allotment of twenty. If interest rates remain low, we plan to continuously pay off the cheapest mortgage and replace it with a more expensive MFH. Ideally I would like 20 MFH's locked into cheap 30-year mortgages while simultaneously holding a large portfolio of SFH's held in cash. If things go well, I may start diversifying into larger commercial real estate projects or other types of investments.

In addition, when I get back to the States I would like to team-up with some local investors to learn about flipping. Ideally, I would use the proceeds from the flips to help finance more longterm rentals for my portfolio. And if things are going very well, I may start to look into larger commercial real estate investments or other lucrative opportunities as they arise.

Well, that's about it. I would love to get some feedback on my investment strategies and goals, and I would be more than happy to help answer any questions folks might have about investing from outside the USA. I look forward to meeting you!

Thanks,

Wade

[Wade Chilcoat]

Hi Ali,

We have six in Memphis and one in Indiana. Later this fall I am looking at buying some more Indy or getting into Alabama depending on market conditions at the time. I have been working with Norada for my turnkeys and they have been great holding my hand as a foreign investor. 

From what I have been reading, California is a very tough market for gaining passive income through cashflow, so I can see why you would be interested in investing out-of-state. Any advice for a newbie?