Newbie from Tampa, Florida

[Marissa Miles]

Hey everyone! I'm Marissa. I currently live in Valrico, and I grew up in Pinellas, so I'm pretty familiar with the whole Tampa Bay area. I recently fixed my credit, and I'm finally in a position where I can start looking in to real estate investing. I have a bit of money saved up, but I'm hesitant to buy anything with how questionable the market is right now; especially in this expensive of an area. Unfortunately house hacking isn't really an option for me at the moment either. In my research I of course have found Bigger Pockets and I've been listening to their podcasts and reading some books.

I would love to meet some real estate people in the area, even if it's just online. I joined Tampa REIA and I'm considering joining TBREIA (any maybe pro Bigger Pockets?) but I want to do a little more research on the benefits. If anyone has experience with these please let me know your opinions! Due to COVID I'm not finding as many options for networking as I would hope, so any other Tampa-based opportunities would be great too!

As of right now, I work in I.T. I've done tech support for a couple real estate related law firms and am currently in Business Processes. I also do a ton of web development on the side and I LOVE designing systems. Since I'm a little iffy on buying right now, I've designed a wholesaling website so I can still find some other people deals and learn about the systems/ARVs of the area. I know it's pretty competitive here though, so we'll see how that all goes! I'm learning Podio right now too, so if anyone needs help with their website or other systems I'd be glad to give you a hand. :)

[Marissa Miles]

@Edgar Rodriguez - Yeah I'm always hesitant to make any major move without educating myself. My hope is by making some industry friends I'll be able to prevent myself from over-educating and not taking action. Hahaha

I'm a very analytical person, so I love digging into data and numbers on things. I'm reading the Rehab Estimates book from BP right now and looking in to some case studies so I can see how the real numbers shake out. 

@Dan Maciejewski - Thank you! Haha it seems almost everyone I meet in the area is originally from out of state! I tried moving away to Maryland for a couple years and I just couldn't stay away! It's such a beautiful area to live. Besides, I missed all the sun.