Excited Serious New Member from Mansfield Massachusetts

[Liane Cochrane]

Hi Everyone!

I want to take a moment to lift my head from my hours of absorbing the information on this amazing site to finally introduce myself and throw my particular life's scenario out here for any of your most welcome thoughts, information, suggestions, comments, etc.

I am a very excited, resolute newbie in Mansfield Massachusetts and determined to get started sooner rather than later. The more I learn, the more interested and motivated I become and realize with regret that I wish I had started this a long time ago. I have been interested in real estate as long as I can remember, have always loved to go through listings just for fun, but never became serious enough to actually pursue real estate investing as a realistic path for me until now. Recently, all hours spent outside of my daily obligations of work, kids, etc. have been spent going through, note-taking and absorbing as much information as I can until my eyes close at night. I notice how happy I am when I am reading and learning everything I can about real estate.  I find it fascinating, and it just feels right.  

I am becoming much more comfortable with the basic processes, analyzing deals, crunching the numbers, learning about the various options for financing properties and learning as much as I can about others' experiences in order to limit the number of mistakes or unwelcome surprises that may come my way as I move forward. This site has been invaluable in my quest to learn about all of the necessary knowledge, the vital processes and the ever-important others' experiences and and so much more.

While recently putting my plan to paper and visualizing my future business, my excitement and happiness about this path grows. My first draft plan thus far includes starting with flipping a few houses/condos to produce some quicker short-term income to reinvest those profits into the purchase of buy and hold multi properties and any and all other opportunities that make sense using my numbers and following my plan. I am also not adverse to other real estate investment opportunities such as providing financing, note investing, partnering, etc. as long as the numbers and scenarios make sense. I also plan to allocate time to explore alternate deal-finding avenues beyond the MLS, including probate listings, foreclosures, vacant properties, wholesalers, turnkey, etc. Some of these avenues are more palatable to me than others, but I believe all are worth exploring, even it just to learn more about each avenue.

Now that I am 53, have two minor children and am have been working the dreaded 9 - 5 grind for way too many years, I am eager to make much needed changes to achieve more personal and financial freedom. I am trying to be realistic about my expectations and am very happy to work very hard, especially as I become more confident that it is possible to eventually replace my grueling, stifling, soul-deadening office grind with building a full-time real estate investing business. Nothing would make me happier than removing myself from the matrix and providing myself and my family the opportunity to have a happier mom, life and soul-enriching financial and personal freedom.

I am an IT professional and have even been tinkering with automating some of the important and time-consuming processes - crunching the numbers - sifting through numerous listings to more easily eliminate non-deals and identifying possible offer-worthy deals.

I have lived in a primary single family residence in Mansfield for 19 years, owned a lakefront cottage in New Hampshire for a couple of years (back in the late 2000s) that I rented out as a weekly vacation rental before selling it with a small profit a few weeks before my second child was born (not enough rentals scheduled during the last six months or so to cover the mortgage). I also have a few thousand dollars invested in Lending Club (not impressed thus far) and have a small portion of my IRA mutual fund picks in REITs. This is the extent of my real estate experience.

I have a bit of money saved up, have a decent paying job as an IT professional, very good credit, no large debt-to-income ratio and a good amount of equity in my home. I am in the process of making appointments to go over financing options with a broker, so that I can be fully aware of all options beyond typical conventional. HELOC, hard money lenders, conventional pre-approval, etc. can all be considered.

If anyone has any insights regarding my current status, I would love to discuss them with you. I will continue to put my nose to the grindstone and keep learning everything I can while trying to get started and try to avoid getting mired down in research paralysis. 

Thank you all for reading through this and for any insights, suggestions and even some great answers to the question "What would you do next, if you were me?" I am so sorry for the very long post, but I wanted to include as much information as I can, so that anyone who is interested in responding will have the full picture.  Thank you all for your patience and any responses that may be helpful for me and for you as I am happy to reciprocate with anything I can contribute during our real estate investing journeys.

- Liane