Introduction New Potential Investor from Pittsburgh, PA

[Doug Britton]

Just found the community and am blow away with the amount of knowledge and help this community has available. I'm in the Pittsburgh PA area looking to buy my first investment property. I currently have roughly $20k in cash and about $50-70k in equity in my house. Hoping to find a 2-3 bedroom place for around $70k in the western portion of Pittsburgh out by the airport. I'm also keeping my eye open for a multifamily unit if I can get the numbers to work. Right now I'm working on getting in contact with a few brokers to see what I can do with a line of credit on my house to get into a good property. Thinking the BRRRR strategy may be the bet option for me, but I still need to read up more on this as I'm not sure how the refinancing portion works and still being able to maintain positive cash flow.

My goal is to be able to get 3 units by the end of this year, and then 3 more next year.  The reason I'm doing this for obvious long term wealth and to be able to commit to this full time,  but I also have a 7 month year old son who has down syndrome.  I'd really like to be able to create good passive income for him to utilize in the future.

[Jeremy Taggart]

@Doug Britton Welcome! You should be able to get a HELOC on your primary to utilize that equity. I've seen banks go up to 90% LTV in the 2nd position. I'm not a huge fan of utilizing short term money like a HELOC as the down payment on a long term investment like a rental, so I'd probably go the BRRRR route if you are able to get a decent amount plus the cash you have saved up.

Beaver County could be a good option to get into something near the airport for less out of pocket compared to Allegheny. If you want to do more than one, you could use the HELOC + cash as the down payment and utilize a hard/private money lender for the rest to stretch your dollar further. Then pay those both off on the refinance. The hard part today isn't finding money, it's finding the deals.