New Member Looking to Invest in Louisville/Southern Indiana Area

[Tanner McRae]

Hello everyone! 

I’ve been wanting to invest in real estate for a while now, but living in the San Francisco Bay Area makes for a challenging start. With crazy prices, no-contingency all cash offers, and a serious lack of supply I was ready to chalk it up as a loss and give up on real estate. I happened across the bigger pockets podcast by accident and listened to episode 257 where David Greene talks about how he started doing out of state investing. After listening, a lightbulb went off! I read his book, scoured forms, and I’m feeling pretty confident on starting my real estate journey out of state. 

I grew up New Albany, Indiana and I’m looking to invest in the Southern Indiana & Louisville areas. Primarily looking for buy and hold properties. I look forward to connecting with as many people out there as I can and I’m really excited to get more involved in the bigger pockets community! 

[Raphael Collazo]

Hey @Tanner McRae!

Welcome to the BP community! This forum is filled with driven and inspiring people who are always willing to help. I'm a big-fan of multi-family investing and I'm constantly reading books on how to maximize the value I get out of these investments. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. "Multi-Family Millions: How Anyone Can Reposition Apartments for Big Profits" by David Lindhal
2. "Crushing it in Apartments And Commercial Real Estate: How a Small Investor Can Make It Big" by Brian Murphy
3. "The Book On Rental Property Investing" by Brandon Turner
4. "Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book" by Joe Fairless and Theo Hicks
5. "What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow... And 36 Other Key Financial Measures" by Frank Gallinelli
6. "Aggressive Tax Avoidance for Real Estate Investors: How to Make Sure You Aren't Paying One More Cent in Taxes Than The Law Requires" by John T. Reed

These books will help you get a solid understanding of sound investment principles you can use to build your real estate portfolio. Also, have you attended any local real estate investor meet-up groups to establish relationships with local investors? If not, I highly encourage you to do so. One of the most popular groups, R.E.I.A (Real Estate Investor Association) has chapters in most major US cities. I'm confident that they have a large and highly engaged chapter in the bay area. Our Kentucky chapter has over 700 members, many of whom are extremely active in the market and have a wealth of knowledge they're willing to share. Along with that, check out "meetup.com" to see if there are any other real estate meetups in your area.

As a side note, My friend @Luke Neubauer and I host a real estate investor meetup in Louisville. As part of the meeting, we network with other like-minded investors and host speakers who talk about topics related to real estate investment. This month, Mark Helm, one of Louisville's top commercial brokers and author of "Creating Wealth Through Self-Storage", will share his story of how he got started investing in self-storage and how he's navigated the obstacles presented by the current pandemic. We usually host it at a local restaurant but due to the health concerns presented by the coronavirus, we have decided to host in via Zoom. Here's the link from the "Events and Happenings" page of BiggerPockets that contains all the event info:

https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/814263-creating-wealth-through-self-storage?page=1#p4867392

If you're free for the meeting, it would be a great one to attend virtually. 

I hope this helps and good luck on your investing journey!

All the best,