member from York, PA

[John Schmiesing]

Hi everyone,

Although I've been a member for awhile I have not yet been very active on the forums, however I really hope to change this. So here is my intro….First off, I really love the website and the podcasts. Brandon and Josh do a fantastic job to make REI info very accessible!

I am in the York, PA area and am originally from Rochester, NY. I have a Mechanical Engineering background from Syracuse U. and recently got my MBA from Shippensburg U. My wife and I have been married for nearly 5 years, have a beautiful 11-mo old daughter and two chocolate labs. I currently have a 9-5 which I enjoy….and RE is quickly becoming a passion.

I have been investing in RE since 2011 and now have 2 rental properties, each held by an LLC. Our strategy is buy & hold, although both properties have been ‘buy, rehab, rent, hold'.

A couple of factors brought me to REI: 1) I have always been very handy and mechanically inclined, working on my cars, personal house, and investment ppties 2) I have seen and experienced some negative parts of being solely reliant on a 9-5 and want to have a different approach to securing our future. Moreover it seems that REI is a great way to build wealth, utilize leverage, and secure cash flow. I drank the Kool-Aid of REI….!

This year we renovated a kitchen in our 2-unit. It was a long, arduous, and overly expensive route and was full of lessons learned. I hired a carpenter who is a friend and we worked mainly weekends towards completion. There were some aspects farmed out also, but we did most of the work. This meant the unit was vacant for around 4 months (3 to renovate and 1 to find a tenant). During this time I feel like I made many mistakes, however ramped up my studying 10-fold. To put it succinctly, I had a big shift of thinking and instead of getting frustrated, I studied more. The more time I invested on BP, reading books, etc, the more excited I became. For this reason I feel REI has become a passion…because to be so frustrated by something and yet still have a big desire to learn more must mean something very positive.

This is only a piece of the story, but don’t want this post to go on forever….

At this point I am looking for investment opportunities in my area! Hope to speak with everyone soon.

-John