Ready to scale up - looking for input

[Brian Bandas]

Hello BP community!

It's been a slow, steady growth for me over the last few years. Right now I have 3 pretty solid rentals and have just eclipsed the $2000/mo mark in passive rental income (before maintenance/vacancy). I've also owned a couple others that I sold last year to refine my holdings and my strategy.

I'm finally to a place where I have a pretty solid income and can easily get a bank loan, and I have some experience and a more refined strategy under my belt as an investor.

I began to look at this more as a business, and less as something I do on the side as I save money; my first thought was, "If I were an entrepreneur in any other capacity, I wouldn't limit myself to whatever money I had in the bank--I'd raise capital, whether private or from a bank, and build a business that way!" This allowed me to start considering more possibilities than just waiting to save up my next down payment. (I've been buying properties between $200-275k, so it takes me a while to come up with a down payment.)

I've finally landed on a strategy/model that I'm excited about, and that should finally allow me to grow quickly from 4 mortgages to 10 (then we'll cross that bridge when we get there!)

I know this is obvious to most of you, but it will start with launching my own consistent direct mail marketing to generate deals. For those that I want to keep, I will use private money to buy directly from distressed sellers (at or below 70% ARV) and then will do a cash out refi at 70% of appraised value.

(This creates two first steps: create my marketing campaigns, and lock in a few short-term private lender options.)

For those properties that I don't want to keep, I intend to rehab them and list them myself. (I am an agent as my day job. I've heard this called whole-tail.)

I'm curious what advice or thoughts you would be willing to share as I ramp up this business. I'm ready to grow my portfolio to a new level, first hitting the $5k/mo mark as quickly as possible, and eventually building a rental business that generates $100k/mo.

On a personal note, because a person's WHY is very important, this will allow my wife and I to support and even fully fund hundreds of families' adoptions over the years. I don't need $100k/mo to live comfortably. But I do WANT to generate that because I can give generously and impact the world around me in powerful ways.

Thanks in advance for your tips, advice, encouragement and cautions!

[Brian Bandas]

Oh, I've also been networking pretty aggressively with as many wholesalers as I can find, although so far I've found their offerings to be pretty hit or miss in terms of realistic ARVs and realistic rehab costs. Somehow the ARVs keep ending up a bit high, and the rehab costs seem to be consistently low. Go figure.