Newbie from Grove City, Pennsylvania Area (Mercer, Butler, and Ve

[Charles Patterson]

Who am I?

My name is Charles and I am a computer programmer from the Greater Pittsburgh, PA Area.

Where am I from?

I am from the Grove City, PA area, and mainly operate in the Mercer, Butler, and Venango County areas.

Some specific areas that I am looking in are Mercer, Grove City, Harrisville, Slippery Rock, Butler, Franklin, Oil City, Clintonville. I live in a rural area, so I tend to have to cover a lot of "small town" USA kind of areas.

How did I get Started?

Semi-Accidental landlording. Long story short is that I bought a house and then rented out some rooms to friends while I went back to college. My wife and I realized that this real estate landlording thing could be profitable, and off we went.

Since then we have house hacked one more property and purchased another with a conventional loan. Then we hit a brick wall as we didn't know how to get any more money to got more loans at such a "steep" 20-25% down that banks were asking for.

Then a few years ago I learned about "Creative financing" then the research began while still landlording my now 4 other doors. Since then I have made many of the "New Landlord" mistakes. You know, all those ones that they tell you not to do but know you will do them anyway... well, I did them before I was told not to.

How did I come to join Bigger Pockets?

While researching creative financing BiggerPockets kept on coming up in searches. Great, there is that forum site again, won't get solid info there. Boy was I wrong. Later while watching the Gurus on youtube and taking in all I could without paying, my excitement grew and grew... then I found the podcasts... now I am hooked to BiggerPockets and realize the wealth of knowledge that is stored there. Wished I would have found it earlier AND realized that it contained good information that I was seeking.

Current Goals

currently we are trying to locate and purchase small multi-family residential deals, preferably completed with owner financing in some sort. We live near Slippery Rock University, so the benefits of the college rentals are appealing, and we live close enough that we can go check up on our units ourselves.

Long Term Goals

Continue with the college rentals, but then upgrade to multi-family commercial real estate, such as apartment buildings and/or trailer courts.

Current Deals

Currently we have 2 duplexes that we are about to put under contract with an "Article of Agreement". Check my post history as I did post a question about what comes next out there.

We have 2 other duplexes that we are working on, but might not have a contract until next year.

Finally, there is a 4 unit apartment building that we are working towards with a seller who is willing to do owner financing. I say apartment building and not quad-plex because it has some shells/storage areas attached that I could possibly build out into 2-4 more units. We are awaiting a date that we can get into the unit and see everything.

Closing Statement

I really look forward to start my interactions on the forums now.  I have learned a lot of lessons the hard way and still have a lot of questions to ask and I get so excited to talk about my deals.  Every time we tell family about it they don't show any enthusiasm about it and we always get the comments like, "I could never do that" and "I don't want to be unclogging toilets at 2 in the morning"  And they never want to hear what it is really like.  But here we know we can find like minded people to share and grow with.