24 year old newbie from Modesto, California

[Malcolm Miller]

Hello BP community!

My name is Malcolm Miller and I'm a farmer from the Central Valley near Modesto. I've been keeping boredom at bay by listening to the BP Podcast while sitting on the tractor. Awesome stuff! It's been very enlightening to learn that I don't actually need the proverbial 'rich uncle' to get started investing in real-estate.

Any quick advice for someone who doesn't have a lot of extra cash and a car loan that I hope to get paid off in under 2 years?

From what little I've learned I'd really like to do the long distance rental gig. My long term goal would be to get enough cash flow from rentals that I could work a job I really want, even if that job couldn't support my family by itself.

I look forward to becoming an investor in the, hopefully, near future!

[Michael Zuber]

@Malcolm Miller as others before me highlighted you should continue to educate yourself and as @Jeff Zimmerman highlighted you should look to partner with someone in your market. Let me give you an example of something I would do if you were in Fresno (My Market)

I can't cover Fresno by myself as it is too big so I pay/reward people who help me find deals and this can be done several ways.

1) Often called Driving for Dollars.  You could pick a neighborhood, drive around and find all the properties that look to be in some kind of distress. This isn't big money but a couple of hundred bucks for a nice long list never hurts and you get some experience 

2) the real money comes in when you can find a motivated seller.  If you can find a situation where the seller will take a cash offer at a discount you can secure an assignment fee and I have paid assignment fees between 5K - 25K depending on the deal. This is called wholesaling

Lastly as was pointed out in an earlier reply I would focus your activities on Modesto as you can't really get this type of hands on experience via realtor.com/google maps/zillow

In the end get your hands dirty and look to find opportunities to create value for investors around you and money will follow

Z