Starting out in Chapel Hill, NC

[Weston Tracey]

Hi All,

Finally ready to take action! A bit about me:

-Moved to NC and bought a primary residence in January. (Wife and kids, no house hacking for me!)

-I've been wanting to get started for years since taking an RE class in college, and have been reading and researching off and on since.

-After budgeting expenses/extras/emergency fund/401k/HSA/etc I will have $45-55K/year from my W-2 job to devote to RE.

-My motivation is financial freedom, and to open up my options in middle age (currently 25) but also for security for my family of 5.

I'm interested in buy and hold, likely via BRRRR. I'm waiting to define my specific criteria until I get to know this area a bit better, but I will definitely be using a PM.

I'll be spending the next couple months getting to know the area and hopefully going to some REI meet ups and making some contacts. I'm still defining my goals, although a lofty somewhat arbitrary longer term goal is $1M in equity 10 years from now.

In the short term since I only have 10k today, and 50k by year end, I'm torn between:

1) doing a traditional mortgage purchase this year because I'm so ready to take action.

2) waiting and BRRRRing when I have sufficient cash

3) BRRRRing with the help of hard money by year end (I'll investigate private money first)

I'd love any advice I can get, including areas to investigate in the Chapel Hill / Raleigh / Durham region, and what kind of numbers others are seeing in the region!