New investor in Fort Worth, Texas!

[Garrett Minter]

Hello all! My name is Garrett Minter. I am 37yrs old and live in Fort Worth TX. I have a wonderful career as a quality assurance inspector on heavy civil highway construction. Specifically I oversee the testing and placement of construction materials used on the IH-35W project. I have been in construction my entire life and this is just the latest evolution of that. I spent years doing residential construction and project management eventually standing up subdivisions at a time. From there I had a few years where I owned a residential custom remodeling company which eventually transitioned more towards insurance restoration work. Specifically storm repair, roofing etc. One thing lead to another and about 10 years ago I found myself with a foot in the door of civil construction. It has been an absolute blessing and I always say, "Ive had some days where I didn't feel like coming to work, but Ive never had a day that I hated coming to work."

I have been acquainted with real estate investing for about ten years. But only recently really made the commitment to follow this path. If there was one negative about my current career it would be that I work 60-70hrs a week, every week. My desire to build a more passive income has really moved front and center. Currently I have around an 800 credit score, make a six figure income, have a strong 401k and have spent the last year pushing to pay off any consumer debt and have recently found myself 100% debt free. That being said I am not a home owner and am tired of throwing away $19K a year in rent. 

Now that I am debt free my plan is to continue to aggressively save through the rest of the year with my lease expiring in February. At that time I would really like to purchase my first home or small MF with the intention of house hacking my way into my first investment. That being said living in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex its hard to find on market deals where the numbers work. I am still in the learning phase soaking up as much information as possible. I listen to audiobooks about 3-4hrs a day and have been pouring through the real estate books as well as spending as much time as possible on the forum putting together a plan.

I intend to use my background and experience to the best of my ability moving forward. Doing some wholesaling/assignment contracts has been something Ive considered. It seems alot of wholesalers are very unrealistic with their rehab cost trying to make the numbers work when they just dont. Then they develop a poor reputation from experienced investors or worse yet lead an inexperienced investor to make a poor investment possibly cutting short their career and hurting them financially. If I were to pursue wholesaling it would be with the drive to only present deals with true, accurate numbers and ensure A,B & C parties walk away happy. Beyond that I am really looking to buy and hold with the intent of scaling quickly. Eventually moving out of SFR into large multifamily or NNN commercial.

Look forward to contributing and learning here on BP as well as meeting local investors. If I can ever be of any help to any of you please dont hesitate to let me know!