Out of state investing and creative deal making as a newbie investor 1 year in

[Argel Algura]

Hey Bigger Pockets Community,

A year ago I wrote about rebuilding and starting over in life and considering real estate investing as a path (see post here: "Bad credit, minimal cash and starting over in life . . . Is there hope for me here?")

An update one year later after this post, I now have:

- Got my property and casualty license and wrote 370+ policies in a year

- Saved up a few more thousand dollars in investable cash, paid off $20K in debt and raised my credit score by 100 points

- Launched a direct to seller cold email marketing campaign and generated leads for cheap

- Got connected with a few real estate investing communities like Subtle Asian Real Estate and Pace Morby's SubTo

- Aggressively read and studied as much as I can get my hands on

That being said, I decided to run a marketing campaign to generate distressed seller leads in Phoenix, Arizona, mostly because:

1. It's a landlord friendly state.

2. After a year at staring at insurance data daily, AZ insurance rates are only increasing marginally, while most states are damn near doubling.

3. Phoenix is the fastest growing metro in AZ.

The campaign is generating leads, however with my minimal real estate investing experience and limited time from my full time job I feel like I'm not maximizing my opportunity here.

The way I see it is I have 2 paths:

1. Focus on wholesaling the leads I get from my campaign (while refining my underwriting and acquisition skills) to stack up cash, then begin acquiring rental property.

2. Go straight into focusing on creative finance, subject to, and minimal cash down deals and build from there.

I want to hear your thoughts on what direction to take here if you were in my shoes given these constraints (full time job and a few thousand saved) and you want to optimize for passive income first, then value appreciation?

I also want to hear from those of you who have transitioned out of a full time job by doing out of state investments/creative finance - how long did it take you to transition out? What obstacles did you overcome? What are the risks of going down this path?

After feeling hopeless, lost and confused about a year ago, I'm happy to report that I'm starting to see the light and the path to wealth after taking consistent action, and am excited to be seeing the progress.

Cheers, to constant and never ending improvement

Argel