New to Real Estate Investing and need advice!

[Tyler Santos]

I am a 34 year old executive assistant for a small scientific instrument company in Boston. My younger brother (32) and I have been doing a lot of reading and studying various investments vehicles. We have both decided that real estate investing, in particular, buy and hold rental properties for cash flow, is the route that we would like to go. I know this is a vague question and topic but I'm looking for advice as to where to start. What kind of tools should I be utilizing to analyze deals and what types of properties should we be looking into first? I'm currently watching the deal analysis webinar but I learn best by doing and by practicing. I live in Boston and have strong ties to Vermont so we were thinking it would be best to look in those areas first. I guess I'm just looking for guidance in getting started and what steps my brother and I should take first. I'm also just looking to build relationships with people who have the same interests and who have more experience and knowledge than I do (which is basically everyone on this site at this point). Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Account Closed]

Don't be anxious to jump into real estate. Don't believe everyone is getting rich and nobody fails. Don't believe it is as simple as baking an apple pie. Don't rely on the advice from other people who have not already make $millions. Don't believe anything you hear from wannabe gurus selling courses and books. Don't be 'The Blind Following The Blind'.

Now, that is a lot of don'ts. Well...one more don't! Don't purchase a property until after you looked at a thousand properties and you are absolutely 100% positive that you have found a goldmine. If you need to rely of the advice from others then you are not ready. Trust me!!! I listened to experts, listened to brokers, paid experts for advice, paid attorneys to check out deals and I lost a million dollars. After gaining several years of experience I knew enough to tell brokers and experts what was right and what was wrong and that is when I started to make my $30 million in 19 years. 

I love to purchase properties and I was sitting on a million dollars in cash for the past two years. I look for properties every day and cannot find the right property. Sometimes, I sit on my money for several years, but when I do find the right property I always make many times more money than I would if I has blown my wad of cash on 'just okay' deals. You make almost no money when you purchase properties solely for cash flow vs. purchasing properties far below market value or purchasing properties you can do a little rehabbing to and increase the value of the property by 10%, 20% and so on.

Since I cannot find a property to purchase I just paid off two multi-unit properties off totaling 25 units with $950,000. I am now saving about $4500 in interest every month. Since I spent my wad of cash to pay off my properties I applied for a $2 million line of credit and will use my properties for collateral. This way, I still have the ability to purchase properties if I find one and I don't have to pay interest on the line of credit until I use it. If I do find a property I will use my line of credit to purchase the property and then I am going to dump some single family homes to pay the line of credit. I made a lot of money on the single family homes and I am hoping to find some multi-unit properties that will do much better.