New Member in the Buffalo NY area

[Joel Winkelman]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Joel Winkelman I am 21 and currently attending college part time to obtain my finance degree. I with my degree I hope to become a CFP after obtaining my certification. I want to be a fee only fiduciary planner and help people achieve their goals in life. I also currently work full time at a tire factory as forklift operator and an auditor.

A rough look at my current RE goals are to save up $15,000 over the next year or so so I can get an FHA loan and get a multifamily home. While renting out one half of the house I will simultaneously live and renovate my side. After 6 months I will switch sides and perform the same renovations being able to rent my previous side out for more. After renovations are complete I will refinance and use a HELOC as the rest of the down payment.

After this I will l save up again in hoping to repeat this process as fast and with as many loans as possible. With my plan I hope to decrease the amount of time between houses as I will produce more cash flow the more houses I acquire. After 4 loans I will likely have to change plans but I would still like to go along with a BRRRR strategy.

I currently do not have the money to purchase a home at the moment so I plan to continuously learn over the next year about real estate and my market so I am as prepared to execute my plan as possible. I currently listen to 40 hours of BiggerPockets, The Money Show, and audio books at work a week. It has become an addiction haha (Book recommendations?)

If you have any advice I would love to hear it and if you are from the buffalo NY area I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to take you out for a coffee or lunch sometime to talk and listen about your life.

Thanks for reading!

[Maria Mendez]

Hi Joel, I'm in Depew myself. There are a lot of first time home buyer programs out there and some that are specific to particular areas of WNY. In fact, check out the Hamburg grant which offers up to 10k I believe. Also, the Genesee Regional Bank has a 15k grant that they offer. The areas you can purchase a home is limited though. There are banks that offer matching when you're saving for your downpayment too such as M and T (up to about 7500 I believe).