New Member Introductions

[Jonathan Herdina]

Hello BP! I am not technically a new member at this point. I have been looking around BP and been listening to the podcast for over a year now, but this is my first official post. My name is Jonathan Herdina, I have lived in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon my entire life (Beaverton and Hillsboro to be more precise). I just recently got licensed as a Real Estate Appraisal Assistant/Trainee and I am currently looking for a mentor to become an apprentice under. I think I am leaning towards an interest in Certified General Appraisal but I will probably have to look into Certified Residential Appraising if I can't find someone to work with in the first few months.

I have discovered my interest in Real Estate investing (thus my membership on BP) and this led me to get into the business of Real Estate in the form of Appraising. I am 33 years old, my wife is 31, and we will be welcoming our first child into the world in early/mid January. We enjoy traveling, spending time with friends and family, and the spending time in the great outdoors. We summited Mt. St. Helens last summer, along with many more training hikes that were both difficult and rewarding. I have completed 2 Tough Mudders, 3 Spartan Races, a triathlon, and various other physically demanding challenges to test my limits and challenge myself. 

As far as Real Estate Investing, so far we have opened our two spare bedrooms in our SFH for AirBNB rentals and made over $10,000 during the time that it was open. It was difficult structuring our lives around the cleaning schedule that we needed to accommodate to make that venture a success, but it was fun getting to know travelers and help them discover new and interesting things to do while on vacation. We stopped having our house open to AirBNB at the beginning of Nov 2018, so that we can prepare the baby room and prepare for family that will visit during the holidays. Our current plan to continue our journey toward financial independence through RE is to sell the SFH at the beginning of next summer and move into a duplex or a fourplex and self manage the property. We are very much looking forward to the new challenges that we will encounter and we are very grateful for the vast amounts of knowledge and experience we are learning through BP forums, blogs, podcasts, as well as my Audible subscription.

I look forward to using BP to network and connect with other investors and professionals so that we can learn and grow together in our pursuits of self improvement. Thanks for your time and I hope to talk to many of you soon. Have a good Thanksgiving week everyone and a safe holiday season. 

Jonathan Herdina