Med Student Seeking Advice

[Dylan Smith]

Hello everyone. I am extremely new to real estate. I know nothing about it..at all. I love learning new things and have had a desire to learn about real estate for a while. WHERE DO I START?! Aside from that, I would like honest...brutally honest opinions... regarding my current situation and if it is a good idea for me to get into real estate. Let me start by saying my life long goal has been to become a physician. After 4 years of undergrad, a masters degree, two years of studying for the MCAT while working full time, a ton of stress, tears, and sleepless nights, I found out last week my dream is coming true. I was accepted into medical school and will start in the fall of 2020. The kicker? The worst is yet to come. I will be tested to new limits and pushed harder than I ever have in my life during medical school and residency. The good news is this process showed me I can handle my time well and that I am not afraid of hard work and to fail. Should I learn as much as possible before matriculating and try to retain it for later down the road? Or is this an opportunity to actually learn about real estate and put thoughts into action. Is it possible to buy and rent out to others during school? I will probably be taking out more loans for school, so it seems absolutely stupid to think about buying a home in any capacity (that is if I even qualify)....right? Thank you for your time!

[Will Fraser]

HI @Dylan Smith, great work kicking the MCAT in the teeth and getting accepted into Med School!  Congrats, bro!  

You're going to have a road ahead of you that is filled with investment opportunities.  Let me dream with you here:

- Buy a house to live in your first year of med school.  Use a low down-payment loan, preferably one with a grant associated with it.  Make this as large of a house as you can find (5 bed 2 bath near campus?) or a 4-plex.  Live in one unit/bedroom/couch of it and rent out the rest to other med students (or really anyone that fits well.  You'll be covering your cost of living and you will own an asset that will keep growing in value, providing cashflow, and you'll own more of it each year as your tenants pay down the debt.

- Year 2 or 3, move again.  Same strategy as before . . . rinse and repeat.

- Maybe do this one more time before your first 4 years are up.  You'll need to navigate the debt/income ratio barrier, but as a MD candidate you can find a lender that is willing to make it happen.

Then, you'll likely match for a residency program somewhere else. . . now you'll have your med degree, a new (yet relatively small) income stream, and a justified reason to move so you can  .. . . DO IT AGAIN.  

At this point you'll have 3-5 homes, with a killer community behind it that can be a source of future tenants.  In my city there is a doc that hasn't lived in the metro for 8 years that is still renting out her med school 5 bed to other med students and she has a waiting list . . . ever single year!  Word of mouth among the future classes of med students can be a killer tenant stream!

Once you are through residence you'll be in a mode of earning way more money doing the doctor thang, so you could decide to go full-on in Medicine and leverage your higher earning potential there and buy "easy rentals", big apartment complexes, or partner with other people and get totally passive returns on your investment.  Or, you could decide to go full Physician On FIRE and keep growing your real estate in the trenches and look up at 40 with a KILLER portfolio of real estate AND a high earning potential for your next decade.

Pumped for you, dude!  

Don't stuff your head full of every book on real estate you can find.  You'll make way more money as a doctor and you can deploy that money in a dozen different ways in real estate . . . the path I dreamed with you on above should be a killer learning course.