First Real Estate Investment

[Chad Forgue]

Hey everyone!

My name is Chad and I just acquired my first property on Sunday. I had a Jeep Wrangler I traded for a 5 acre property in the Southport area in FL.

I’m only 18 years old so this is all very new to me and would appreciate any advice anyone has to offer. Right now I’m debating between trying to sell the lot as it is to get some capital for other investments, or putting a mobile home on it to rent out. I received some quotes on getting the utilities and septic on it, and I’m looking at about $10k to get it going minus the $4k or so worth of timber I can have removed.

From here I still would need a mobile home, which I wouldn’t really have money left for after the utilities are setup, so if anyone has any advice on picking up a mobile home free or at a low cost it would be appreciated as well.

[Daniel Derrick]

Hey Chad! Great job getting your hands on property at such a young age. You have an awesome future if you stick to it!

I am in the Portland, Oregon market and right now I specialize mobile homes. My market is very much different than Florida, but renting out mobile homes is almost always ill-advised. They are depreciating assets that often deteriorate quickly, depending on the tenants you get....meaning high maintenance and cap X costs. Not to mention, buying and moving a mobile home is expensive and complicated. You would probably put in $20k minimally to buy and place the home. You would need many years of good rental income with low maintenance to recoup your initial investment.

If I were you, I would sell the property and use the capital to scale up. You could also use the capital to start in mobile homes. Check out John Fedro’s YouTube channel. He was on BP episode 75. He has great content that would get you started and mobile homes in parks have a low cost of entry. Just a thought! I’m using mobile homes as capital generation to move into buy and hold investing.

Good luck to you!