New guy from Central Florida

[Michael Olesky]

Hi,

My name is Mike Olesky and I currently live in Melbourne, Florida. I was born and raised on the west coast of Florida in the Seminole/Largo area and have lived in North Carolina and Hawaii as well as moving around Florida.

I'm a GeoSpatial Engineer by trade, if you've used Google maps you've used geospatial data. I work with everything from the backend servers, databases and data to writing code for web applications to serve the data to our customers.

I've surfed all my life and require ocean water to remain sane! I also enjoy traveling both for surf and just to see new places and have had the opportunity to travel to some great locations like Japan and Bolivia. In the last few years I've fallen in love with sailing and am currently rebuilding a small 20ft sailboat that I have sailed locally as well as a week long 200 km sail around the keys. The end goal for buying real estate is to not only provide a comfortable living for my family but to be able to have a 30-40ft sailboat and the money and time to put a lot of miles under her keel.

My father has been using his retirement to buy and hold houses over the last five years and has done well. He has really tuned in to our local market and made some good purchases just off of the MLS. So I asked him to show me what he was doing and had a plan to save up money for a down payment. I saved up and my father surprised me with a nice size gift that allowed me to buy now instead of next year.

The house I purchased is a 2003 1700 sqft SFH in Palm Bay,FL. With purchase and repairs I'm in for about $116k, the comps have already started listing for $135 in my neighborhood and I think the comps will hit $150k in the next year. This is an area that saw a lot of new development during the last bubble and has consequently had a lot of foreclosures of newly built houses. After looking at dozens of houses and putting in about 15 aggressive offers, I finally landed a house in a good neighborhood which was in good shape for a decent price. Two weeks of painting and cleaning after work and on the weekend and the house looks almost new!

The prices have already started moving upward so I am renting it for the next year and depending on where the market sits next year, I would like to sell it. I hope to have already purchased another house by then, but if I haven't, I'll be in a good position to find a distressed home and rehab and rent it.

While I am interested in wholesaling and flipping and will pursue these avenues, my near to mid term goal is to buy and hold rehabbed houses that have a solid cash flow.

Thanks for stopping by, I look forward to getting to know the other investors here and appreciate the stories of success and failure and the knowledge shared by all the pros!

Cheers,

Mike