Hello from Massachusetts

[Robert McConaghy]

Hey everybody,

My name is Robert McConaghy, I live just north of Boston and I'm a recent college grad (May 6th, 2011 Northeastern University, Bachelor of Science, Chemical Engineering). I developed my work ethic through 9 years of wrestling (highschool/college) and I currently have a great job as a process engineer for one of the bigger biotech companies in the world, if curious just pm me for the name, and I've been spending the last 6-7 months researching real estate investing with 90% of my free time.

I've reached out to lenders, agents, contractors, brokers trying to assemble all the info I could, and recently located this site and am excited to actually be able to speak with other investors now.

I'm currently 23 years old, basically married (been with my girlfriend for going on 7 years this Nov.), and regardless of the good job, stuck with 120k in school loans. I grew up around physical labor, my father owning multiple different glass business's over mylife time as well as multi-year stint in renovations, renovating my first home before I was 18 (the landlord turned a nice profit).

My first glimpse at REI was when my father bought our first home, it was a 3 floor, 2 unit home foreclosure that was listed at 150k, my dad managed to get it for 75k lived it in for several months renovating it on his own. We lived in that house for 9 years after that and sold it for a little over 450k when we finally moved. At that point I was old enough to understand the concept of what he did and knew that's what I wanted to do in the future. As graduation from college grew closer I began looking into REI because I know that true financial freedom comes from smart investing and managing your finances, not from your paycheck. My goals are to begin with flipping low cost houses obtained from estate sales or REO's until I build enough capital to begin buying rental properties free and clear. I'm attacking this aggressively because I would love to propose to my girlfriend in the coming year and obtain a house of our own to live in, as well as the ability to help my family financially as my mother has been the only one working full time for the past few years. Theres a lot of debt to go around in my house, as my younger brother (19) has a combination of a defect in his aorta valve as well as the disease hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (probably spelled that wrong, its the same disease that most of the young highschool atheletes died of on the court/field from being undiagnosed, thankfully his aorta defect allowed for frequent testings and caught it ahead of time) and a mytochondrial defficiency in his skeletal muscles. All this has made me strive to get the best education I could to go as far in life as I possibly can to help alleviate some of the burdens on my families shoulders and make everything more comfortable, and I believe the hard work I'm putting into real estate will allow me to achieve that quicker than any other means.

I’m currently looking into hard money lenders as means of financing, as well as branching out to local investors and others that have the funds and interest to take advantage of all of the great deals currently available. I had put in my first offer last weekend, just to find out afterwards that the lender I had been in talks with does not currently do any funding in Massachusetts. I admit this let the wind out of my sails quite a bit as I had finally got the momentum in my favor, however I fully understand that if this was an easy task everyone and there mother would be doing it, and that obstacles set the true achievers aside from the rest of the crowd.

Looking forward to meeting everyone and getting involved.