Excited Newbie from Rhode Island

[Chelsie Ritarossi]

Hello Bigger Pockets community,

My name is Chelsie Ritarossi and I am looking to acquire my first real estate investment property! I am a born and breed Rhode Islander, currently working as a Marketing Manager with strong ambitions to be financially free before I am 35 (currently 26). To me, being financially free would to be able to work a more flexible schedule, be on the boat on days when I would typically be at work or on the mountain on mid-week powder days! Curiosity on ways to invest my money triggered my education on real estate investing. 

I have been in research mode with my investment partner for the past few months, making sure that we were gathering as much knowledge to decide on which path we wanted to start with. I live in Rhode Island and, although it is a bit of an expensive and tough market, I want to have my first property near me so I can learn as much as possible.

After doing some research we are looking to invest in one of the following areas in Rhode Island:

1. Providence/Pawtucket/East Providence Area

2. Cranston/Warwick Area

3. Coventry/West Warwick Area

4. Possibly Westerly Area

We are looking to hopefully be able to use conventional financing if the deal allows, which I think is a good place to start learning given I have already been through that process with my primary residence.

We are now in "search" mode, we have created various versions of our own Cash Flow calculators, Cash on Cash calculators and have determined our goals for what we would like the house to produce in order for it to be something we would like to consider.

We have found a few that we would like to potentially look into with an agent (we potentially have one, we need to vet if they have worked with investors before not just retail home buyers) so that we can close on our first property by the end of 2018.

We are reasonably handy people if a house needs repairs we are willing to take on a task and put in sweat equity.

We are thinking about attending the next REI meet up in Rhode Island so that way we can begin networking with others in our area.

We appreciate any feedback and thoughts. We are here to learn and hopefully be of value to others in any way that we can.