Introducing myself (48307) area

[Brandon Boyer]

Hello everyone,

My name is Brandon Boyer. I'm very excited to become a member of the Bigger Pockets community.

A bit of background on myself. I'm 30 years old, I work professionally as a Welding Engineer in the Metro Detroit area. About a year ago I started to get the itch to buy a house and got Brandon Turner's book on Real Estate investing and I became hooked.

I've made it my goal this year to buy my first property by July after a year of working on improving my finances and credit. The last few weeks have been rough with the search though. My game plan has been to get a house near Oakland University in the 48307 area for about $140,000 using an FHA loan with 3.5% down. Doing this I can keep my payment at a place where I can make over-payments and get my equity to 20% within two years without having to depend on property appreciation. Unfortunately the market i've been looking at is fairly cold and my realtor and social circle are all telling me that I should just buy something for 200k and just spend 4-5 years in the house. I know it's tough time of year to be looking to buy and so I'm going to keep my ear to the ground until I can find something better.

My long term game plan is to refinance this home into a conventional loan without PMI and then rent it out to Local university students. After the two years my credit and finances should be at a point where I can get a new property every year until I have four properties, with my goal being leaving the rat race by age 45. I see too many of my automotive colleagues in their 60's having to work everyday because of piss poor planning.