We are starting this journey and can't wait for advice.

[Skye Penland]

Hello everybody! My name is Skye and my wife and I have always wanted to invest in real estate but really didn't understand how to do it the right way until recently. 

A little back story: I am a fulltime Travel OR/CVOR Nurse  and my wife and 4 girls travel with me wherever I go. We purchased a home in Plano, Tx straight out of school in 2015 for 169,000 which has appreciated to 225,000 now. We have a renter who pays 1625 in rent. For us this is a good cashflow property. 

After moving from Plano we ventured to Alaska for two years where we bought a ZLL home in a decent neighborhood we paid 265,000 in early  2017. Before leaving we rented it out for 1900 but it hasn't appreciated at all, Anchorage is a flat market. 

We are now back in Dallas reestablishing our tax home where we purchased a historic home for us and STR. Aside from the management headache it has, by far, been our greatest cash flow home. We paid 300,000 for it and it has a mother in law suit that has generated about 1500-2000 a month and the main home has generated 1000-3000 a month. We have only been in the home since December of 2018. Given the Dallas markets and neighborhood projections we are hoping it will appreciate 10-15% this year.

We have had this light bulb moment over the last four months about real-estate and my wife has always wanted to pursue it fulltime, albeit I never gave it much thought until recently. We have been listening to audible books on investing in real-estate, calling banks, hard money lenders, researching city's that peak our interest and more.... This is our future, we know this is what we need to be doing. Our only hang up that we want to go all in to the STR route.

We have heard that banks will only loan up to 4 mortgages, is this really true or is it bank specific? 

Has anyone successfully used the BRRRR method to flip and hold for STR? our biggest issue is the fact that we wont have 1-2 years of income generating on the property to prove to a bank that it does, in fact, generate an income.... what ideas do you guys have?

Since we are always moving  (every 13 or so weeks) how do we foster relationship with like minded individuals? I feel like this will be our biggest hurdle. We want to travel so we don't want to stop and become stationary: A. I make much, much more money traveling. B. We can literally go anywhere. Hawaii, virgin islands... and I am paid well to do it so working family vacation all of the time!!! But we don't get to socialize much :?

We want to invest in large cities with low cost housing, 2-3 large hospitals, 1-2 colleges (major, state or community) and decent job growth with the potential to grow/boom... you know we want to literally find a unicorn or a needle in a haystack. We do have an area in mind. We have thought about buying a duplex and rehabbing it our selves... We would live in one side while fixing it up and then after 6-9 months we would move on while LTR'ing one side and STR'ing the other. Our issue is... do we wait until we have 20% and buy as an investment or do we go conventional and buy with 3.5-5% down and move there for a year (gross) and do the work ourselves OR do we buy a pre-foreclosure using hard money and trying to do it all remotely?

That last option isn't ideal and it would take us assembling a team prior to locating a property but it could be the most beneficial because of the potential for equity..... 

Anyway... we are reading so much and really look forward to growing with everyone! 

Skye and Lauren