New member/ NC

[Carlos Garza]

Hello BP,
I'm a little late on this, but I'm finally doing it now. A little about me. I'm a 28 year old husband, father and United States Marine. Due to being a Marine I have been an a accidental landlord for 2 years. So far it's been a learning experience. I bought a home at appraisal price and renting it has left me breaking even. Not great, but it could be worse. I haven't ran into any major issues yet so I'm doing good. The biggest problem has been when my tenants moved out at the beginning of the month the deposit didn't cover the full cost of carpet cleaning, repairing and trash pickup. They split leaving me to cover the last $200. I am currently still looking for tenants, but I figure it could take a month or two. I was able to better my position by refinancing last month reducing my interest a full percent and lowering my payment by a little over $200. Now I will finally cash flow.

I will be out of the Marine Corps in about 4 months and the goals then are to carry a full time job and also get my real estate license. I plan on building a collection of SFH and MFH around the base with an end goal of 50 homes/units. I am sure this will take some years, but that's the planned end state. I just keep telling myself if I evaluate 1 deal at a time and ensure each one will better my position in some way then I will be fine. Now how to convince my wife that I'm not crazy!

Carlos

Also, I'll get a picture up soon for my profile.