Newbie out of Houston, TX

[Jeremy Staggers]

Howdy Bigger Pockets!

My name is Jeremy.  I'm a newbie real estate investor out of Houston, TX.  I currently work full-time in industrial automation sales.  I've always tried to find ways to boost my income, meaning I've tried a couple of multilevel marketing ventures (which failed...).  Now, my wife and I dog sit via the Rover app to make extra money.  Although, dog sitting is a good source of extra income and fun at times, we're not going to retire off of it.  The more I searched, the more I realized that when it comes to retiring early and boosting your income, everything always came back to real estate.

I've been lurking around the BP forums for about 2 months soaking up all the knowledge I can about REI. Also, I have listened to 147 BP podcasts starting from episode 1, and attended a free weekend workshop from one of the Texas gurus. I like to learn as much as possible before I jump into something, hence my Chemical Engineering degree from Texas A&M University (Sorry, I had to throw that in there some way.). However, I'm doing my best not to get stuck in the education phase and never take action, so I want to make June my "take action month". My first baby action step is to introduce myself on BP. I plan to start my REI business by wholesaling to build up capital for reserves and then, eventually, transition to the flipping and buy-and-hold business. My five-year goal is to generate enough income so that my wife can quit her job. She's always wanted to flip houses and loves all the HGTV shows haha. Anyway, I'm excited for the journey. I know it won't be easy, but I'm not shy of working hard. Thanks for reading, and I'd love to connect with you to build up our networks!

I'll leave you with one question: are people still doing deals in this Corona-crazy environment?  If so, I'd love to hear about your recent deals!

Thanks!

[Daniel Showman]

@Jeremy Staggers first welcome and best of luck in all your endeavors, real estate investment is a truly life changing journey, and gig 'em.  

There are deals being done in Houston and the surrounding areas even with all the COVID stuff, although some investors have slowed their acquisitions in order to gauge the market.  You really might want to look into house hacking as an introduction to the investment process.  Wholesaling is a cheap way to try to get into investing, and people can generate capitol this way, but the wholesaling seems a little over saturated right now and having the back end buyers to sell your deals to is really important.  The Area you mentioned are great but there is a high cost of entry, might want to consider a few other areas in the area as well there is a lot of competition in Houston so when your starting out you really need to take the deals you can find.  Being that your fairly young you could house hack in your area and change your primary residence every couple of years and only need to put low money down each time within the five years you are talking about you could easily have 3 properties under your belt as buy and holds that will help you produce that long term wealth and this is really low cost entry to build your real estate portfolio.