New Investor/Agent in greater Seattle, WA

[Zachary Schnautz]

Hey everybody,

My name is Zach Schnautz and I'm a semi-long term lurker here just starting to post on the forums. I currently work as a facilities manager for a private school on the east side of Seattle in a city named Bothell. I've also recently completed my 90 hours of real estate coursework and passed the state exam and am looking for a firm to join with and begin transitioning into a career as an agent, and I'm hoping specifically to work with all kind of investors in the area. I'd also like to get into wholesaling a little further down the road. Before I started as a facilities manager I worked as a superintendent for a small, mostly residential but some commercial, contracting business for roughly 4 years and still do my own small residential remodeling jobs on the side.

I'm currently building some reserves through managing my finances and reducing expenses while maximizing my W2 savings in addition to my side work income, in hopes to start my investing career by house hacking a 2-4 multi family unit in the greater Seattle area. I'm looking specifically for a property with value add potential that I can put my remolding experience and knowledge into and utilize some sweat equity to jump start my investing career. I'm hoping working as an agent will give me better tools to find the right deal, since the market for 2-4 unit multi families in this area is very hot and very expensive.

I look forward to connecting with all like minded individuals and specifically anyone in my market!

[Michael Haas]

Congrats on taking the plunge and enduring 90 mind-numbing hours of training @Zachary Schnautz! Very little of what you learned will be applicable in real life but hey, you did your time and got the badge :D. 

A lot of brokerages don’t understand investors and don’t like working with them- especially the big names with big marketing budgets. Try to find a managing broker that you like and that has investment experience, and guard your commissions- one of the biggest benefits of being an investor-realitor is rolling your commissions into deals as @Chace Fraser mentioned, and that becomes less effective if you hand over a big portion of that check to your brokerage.

I’m here in Seattle as well, send me a DM and hit me up for coffee sometime!