Newbie from Boston, Massachusetts (actual Boston, not "Boston")

[Timothy Walsh]

Gooooooooooooood Morning Bigger Pockettttttttttttttts!!!!!!!!

(it's actually the evening)

I am Timmy Walsh, and as the title says I am from Boston, like the city of Boston. Most people name a town in their state, and then when whomever they are talking to has no idea where that is, they name the nearest city. Well, the same is true for pretty much anyone from Massachusetts. I'm from xxxx. where? ......Boston. Well I actually do live in Boston,  East Boston to be specific. My wife and I ( as of this post, we've been married 45 days, yes we had a Covid wedding with roughly 15% of our original guest list), sort of fell into real estate investing. We bought a fractional  Condo at a 5-Star ski mountain resort in central New Hampshire, we closed December 2019. 

It's a full ownership condo resort, with loads of amenities. Built in 2016, and when we bought our portion, we were the last 2 bedroom available for purchase. The specs on it: 2 bedroom lockout condo, we own 1/6 of a year (we have 7 days every 6th week). We have the option to stay every week we own, split our week with staying and renting, or renting our entire week. We can short term rental it, but we have to property manage it on our own: calling the resort to tell them who is staying, and for how long. We keep the whole rental amount less the housekeeping/booking fees. We can also have the resort handle all bookings, and managing guests, less their fee (which totals 55%). We chose the resort handle option so it is completely hands off, and collect a check the 3rd week of the month following our week. 

The numbers: we own 63 days this year (9 weeks x 7 days). On a 50% occupancy we begin cash flow on the 33rd day of the rental year that we have it rented. In the 3 years the resort has been open they average 72% occupancy, so you can see why we were so intrigued. 

We loved the resort and had stay their a few times because it was an awesome place and in a great community area, 2 hours from our home. On a whim we said to each other: I wonder what it costs to buy here. 3 hours later, we had gone to the real estate office, got the numbers, went to lunch, signed a contract put a deposit down and popped a celebratory bottle of Cava (aka Spanish champagne, fyi we're huge Cava fans, not champagne.)

Even with Covid, and us missing 3 whole weeks of rentals this year, we just turned a profit with our most recent week in September and we still have 2 weeks left this year. Needless to say we (I am) are pumped that we went out of our comfort zone and purchased it. It's very family oriented and there are tons of amenities and incentives to stay as well as bonuses for friends and family. 

I'm not sure if you're supposed to include that kind of info in the intro, but that's our first venture into REI.

I am a union pipefitter for my W2, which in layman's terms means I do HVAC construction. A lot of pipe welding. We do large scale HVAC systems for hospitals, schools, high rise buildings, and pretty much any pipe that carries any pressure. 

My wife, Liz, is an Interior Designer. She does corporate office construction and she's amazing with design, autocad, and she just has an eye for things that are homey and pleasing. 

I have a background in pretty much anything that involves creating things, I have an associate's degree in sheet metal fabrication, autobody, and custom painting, and I worked for a very high end finish carpenter on Cape Cod. 

We're living in a luxury apartment complex (on the A to A+ side from what I have learned from the podcasts), on Boston Harbor, loving where we live but we are ready to start a family and move out of the city. Liz is pretty adamant about buying our forever home first (she's open to house hacking, although she doesn't know the term yet), but I am slowly working real estate knowledge on her to get us into a fixer upper that we can either BRRRR or flip.

I found bigger pockets through a podcast rabbit hole starting with stock investing, then crypto investing, and then podcasts on learning, knowledge retention, then learning faster and more compact, then growing your personal net worth, then real estate, then moved to youtube podcasts then found an audiobook recap of David Green's Long distance real estate investing and then finally Bigger Pockets. 

I worked my way through the entire Real Estate Rookie with Ashley and Felipe, and then moved to the main podcast, and went to episode 200 and have been sort of cherry picking episodes here and there on what's interesting to me because I don't want to get to the analysis paralysis point and lose interest. 

I think right now, I want us to look for a 2 bed room 1 bath house with at least 1100 square feet that we can turn into a 3 bedroom 2-2 1/2 bath house and then rent and refinance, take our cash out to use that toward our next home, probably somewhere we can stay and grow. (Happy wife, happy life right?!?!?) 

I have tons of ambition and know the value of hard work and failure, when I first got into the Pipefitter's union I spent over 3500 hours learning how to weld (40 hours a week for 18 straight weeks, with NO PAY) before I was able to take a certification test, and then after that, I was able to get on the list to go to work. 

Financially, we need to get our debt to income ratio, and outstanding debt in a better place (we paid for our wedding ourselves and it was an amazing wedding regardless of Covid restrictions), we are in our apartment until September 2021, and will likely rent for about a year after that while we pay down debt/save up some cash.

I'm fascinated with all the different ways that people can make money in REI, and can't believe how much information is available for FREE on the BP network, and am amazed how many of the people I know don't know or haven't heard about Bigger Pockets.

I probably shared too much, and our options might change before we leave our apartment, but I'm just ready to start our new chapter that including financial freedom, and a bajillion partnerships with lots of members here. 

I am interested in turning 2/1 into 3/2, partnerships, maybe some syndications? I think right now our goal will be to cash flow enough to pay for the mortgage on our forever home, which will likely be $3500-4000 per month because of the size house and amount of land we eventually want. I would think right now that would equal a few 10 unit apartments, or maybe a couple 20-30 unit apartment buildings, which will limit the amount of work we need to do to manage, and limit the amount of dormant money in vacancies and evictions. Again that could change but we need to start somewhere! 

Thanks to Brandon, David, Mindy Josh, Ashley, and Felipe for all the episodes I have listened to so far because I have about 6 pages of books to read, notes to revisit and things to remember. 

and now: Bigger Pockets!

To quote Felipe: Let's GOOOOOOOOOOOOO