Yo, BP! New investor from Philly!

[Nina Sachdev]

Hi everyone!

I would like to purchase my first property this year. I think it’s doable. I have the cash and no debt. I have narrowed my list to four areas: Jacksonville, Fla., Toledo, Ohio, Pittsburgh (where I went to college, but not super familiar with the C-class areas), and Detroit. I’ve seen great threads on all four of these areas, some with positive experiences, some not so positive.

My question to those who have done it a hundred times, 1,000 times or even two times:

HOW DID YOU KNOW? How did you know it was time to jump? How did you decide where to buy? Even if on paper everything looked good? Legit PM company, job growth good, population growth good, etc.?

I know I’m a strong woman, but I’m also a scared mom. At this point in my life, I want to move past the fear and build something real for my kids.

How did you know?

[Jim K.]

I woke up in the middle of the night and wandered outside. A deer was standing in my front year, looking at me. A young woman's voice, impossibly clear, spoke inside my head, "FOLLOW ME!"

As the deer ran off into the night, I ran with her, fast, impossibly fast, leaping over hillslopes one moment, across clear running streams the next, like ghosts in the night across the sleeping valley. Finally, she stopped at an old tree that had been hit by lightning, turned to look at me, and I could swear she smiled as she evaporated into the air on that fateful night, her eyes the last to fade.

I went to the tree, and behold! I I saw Polaris, the North Star, glimmering through the burned crook where the lightning had hit it. I turned around and faced due south, and there it was, my first SFR, rising up before me. I opened the mailbox and there was the contract, already signed by the seller. The door opened and there stood the seller, handing me a pen. "We knew you were coming," he said. "The wind told us."

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A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

-- Stephen Crane