New (would be) Investor in Texas and Louisiana

[Armando Pastrana Jr]

Hello all.  I apologize in advance for the long intro post and hope you will read through and provide some wisdom.  

My name is Armando Pastrana and I am determined to start actively investing in real estate, but I am in most ways completely new to it.  I am by profession an intellectual property lawyer and I have been living in Sweden, London and in the US (long story, but lots of commuting involved).  I do have some accidental experience already in that, having lived in lots of places, I have bought homes in some of those places and have kept them as rentals.  That said, after spending a few days on the forums here on BiggerPockets I have gone back and analyzed those properties and I don't love what I discovered!  Additionally, the properties are all over (two-flat in a suburb of Chicago, a duplex in Austin, TX, a single family home in Ruston, LA and another single family outside of New Orleans.  All rented except the one in New Orleans that I use as a second home and place for my parents when they are in the US.

My job in Europe has now ended and I am in a state of transition--don't really want to return to the corporate world, but think I may have to.  I would really love to have the opinions and advice of those on BiggerPockets that may have faced similar issues (or just those brighter than me of which I think there are many here).  Here's my situation.

I just turned 50, have had high paying jobs and a spouse with also a very good job. However, have not saved as much as I would want to, though I do have some savings. As I mentioned, I want to get out of the corporate world and would ideally like to be able to do REI full-time using it both for income and long term financial security/investment. I have about 350K in cash and about 900K in retirement funds that I could access, I think tax and penalty free by setting up a ROBs (a method I am investigating that via the tax code apparently lets one use retirement savings by setting up a C corp and funding a company by buying stock in it with retirement funds). I also have the aforementioned homes that together have about 250-300K in equity. The rents barely cover mortgage and expenses currently.

So, my ask:  What would you recommend doing with the above (do you even think its doable) to both provide income to live on and long term investment?  BTW, my wife would keep working in this scenario, though her job is outside of the US and so may not be helpful for US financing purposes?  Or, as I seem to be concluding, do you think it wiser to get another job myself and enter more slowly (since I will also have a full-time job)?  In either case, what type of property would you recommend getting started with?  Am I to old for this?!

Thank you all in advance.  I am really happy to have found BiggerPockets and be a part of it going forward and I look forward to interacting with many of you!

Armando

[Chibuzor Nnaji]

Hi @Armando Pastrana Jr welcome. So to answer a few o your questions one being no you’re not too old to do this there a lot of people in this business from as young as 18 up to 70 and beyond so you can definitely operate in this space. Second there are many different ways to get into real estate investing whether it be single family residences, buy and flip homes, buy and hold as rentals, invest in apartments as a passive investor or by being active lead sponsor which you mentioned you’d want to be active I’m focused on the apartment arena so I can give you my two cents on apartment syndication from a passive aspect and more active approach. So if you were to go the apartment route and you wanted to be active and do real estate full time you could be a lead sponsor but there’s a lot that goes into that but I would recommend you educate yourself on that space as much as possible and when ready find a mentor who can help point you in the right direction so that one day you can take down your own apartment deals, and go from there. The other aspect of providing income to live on which you mentioned was one of your goals, through apartments is being a passive investor in syndication deals which would provide you a return on the money you invest which would provide passive income to you and if working with experienced operators in a deal you will also be able to learn on how these guys are doing what you want to do in the future which is be an active full time real estate investor. There are so many different directions you can go in Armando in terms of real estate investing and being able to do it full time and there will be a lot of people on here who can offer you really good advice. I hope this helps and if you have any questions feel free to reach out.