So much has happened since closing on my first deal. My first deal was a long distance investment property purchase of a duplex in Indianapolis, IN in November of 2019. The story can be read here. After closing on my first deal and filling both units I was preparing to purchase another property in Indianapolis, IN. Then the most unexpected event happened in March 2020 (other than COVID): my wife got a job that required her to relocate to Atlanta, GA. All plans to purchase another property in Indianapolis were put on hold, and I immediately started planning on purchasing a duplex, triplex, or 4 unit property in Georgia with the intention of taking advantage of being able to live in one of the units so we could make a low downpayment.

At this point I was not licensed in my profession to work in Georgia, had no prospects for a job, was unsure of when we would be actually moving, and had no idea what the normal property prices for the Atlanta market were. Despite those 4 facts, I believed I could qualify for a loan by myself and perfectly time the transition from our apartment in New Jersey to our new investment property home in Georgia. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and the lessons I learned along the way will stick with me for the rest of my life. It was now April, and my first step was to find a real estate agent in the Atlanta area, so I browsed properties on Zillow and reached out. I started to receive a daily list of properties from a very diligent and hard working real estate agent. The real estate agent advised me to get pre-qualified by a lender so I could be prepared to make an offer. After contacting the lender, I was told I would need a “job offer letter” before I could qualify for a legitimate primary residence loan downpayment and rates. I didn’t have a job offer letter and was not even licensed in the state, but in my mind “I would be licensed in no time, and I would be flooded with job offers”. For the next few weeks I let the real estate agent know which properties I was interested in and the agent would go to the home, take a video, then send it to me. After a few weeks, I found a property that was going to work. I made an offer on the property, the offer was countered, and I decided to not pursue it. After a few more weeks I realized I was inadvertently wasting the agent’s time so I apologized to the agent and decided to part ways. The main lesson I learned was that if I plan on using traditional financing and want to buy out of state prior to moving, I must have a job offer letter. Some of you may be wondering why I didn’t just have my wife apply for traditional financing. She did make the offer, but my arrogance and belief I would “have a job offer in no time” caused me to reject her offer. I eventually came to my senses further along in this journey. Ultimately it would not have made a difference at the time because we still did not know the start date for my wife’s job so we had no timeline for moving to Georgia.

After parting ways with the real estate agent, I decided the best route to go was finding a property management company so I could get their feedback when I could realistically purchase a property. As I’ve read in many real estate books, mainly from Bigger Pockets, property management companies have a lot of insight into the markets they manage, and the best ones give great guidance. I found PMs to interview by searching for “Best Property Management Companies in Atlanta” on Google and I searched the Bigger Pockets forums. After interviewing 3 companies I decided on a PM that was actually from the Bigger Pockets forum. I explained my situation to the PM and that I would not be searching until I have a job offer and will follow up with them once I have reached that point.

My wife was eventually told her start date was in July. I still didn’t have a job in Atlanta but I was currently employed full-time in New Jersey. I decided to quit my job and move down with my wife into an apartment and continue to apply for jobs with the hope it would be easier once I was local. We were duped! The apartment we moved to was in a great area of northern Atlanta, and the complex looked beautiful in the pictures online but turned out to be horrible when we arrived. Neighbors had left garbage, broken glass, and bottles all over the front yard. Inside our apartment was no better despite the fact it was “recently renovated”. The floor in our apartment was uneven like a funhouse at a carnival, and there were soft spots where our feet would sink in. There was a hole in our bathroom wall where we could see the neighbors bathroom, spiders were crawling all over the place, and last but not least, the place was infested with cockroaches. We had signed a 6 month lease, so we were not stuck for long, but we were definitely counting the days. We knew we would not renew the apartment lease within a week of staying there.

Once in Georgia, I contacted the PM and was connected with a real estate agent who works for the PM. The real estate agent began to send me properties on a daily basis, which was very helpful in learning the pricing of multifamily properties in the area. I initially set our max price at what turned out to be unreasonable for the market. Not because the price wasn’t at market value but because the competition for homes was so intense at the time that thirty offers would come in for one home so every offer we made was outmatched even with an elevator clause. One aspect of the home purchasing process that was different from my last experience was the process of collaborating with my wife about what the perfect investment property would be to live in.

My previous purchase was a long distance purchase with a loan in my name. The process was more or less driven by me with my wife more interested in the bigger picture of what I was doing. This time around, my wife applied for the home loan since she had the full-time W-2 job. Applying for a loan, which seems like a regular process to an investor, is not regular to someone who is not interested in real estate and has a full-time job. I didn’t realize how time consuming it was to get all the details and paperwork in order mainly because I enjoyed learning the process when I went through it. Lucky for me my wife will not stop something once she starts it and was very motivated to leave our terrible apartment as soon as possible.

We started making offers on properties and eventually were informed about an off-market deal in an up and coming neighborhood of Atlanta. I drove by the neighborhood and told my wife I think we should offer. We made an offer, and it was accepted. My wife wanted to take a look at the property as well, so we took a drive to the neighborhood. My wife was not impressed with the neighborhood or the size of the living space of the property. We ended up backing out of the deal within 3 days of the offer being accepted. To say I was disappointed about backing out of the deal would be an understatement. The next 2 weeks were spent figuring out what would work for both of us. We began to make offers again and made an offer on a single family home with a 2 bedroom/1 bath apartment in the backyard located in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA. This property somehow met both our requirements. We had initially planned to have the PM manage the apartment in the backyard but were later informed that they do not manage properties when the owner lives in the units. It was a surprise, but I’m grateful to have met the real estate agent in the process. The real estate agent had immense knowledge of the area and great contacts for inspection and contracting. I am very much up for the challenge of managing the apartment myself, and in preparation I purchased The Book on Managing Rental Properties by Brandon and Heather Turner. A book that has been helpful so far in planning my low scale rehab for the property is The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J. Scott. This was a whirlwind experience, and I know it will be very helpful in my future in real estate ventures. My plan for my next investment property will be purchasing a foreclosure. I have actually started the process of learning how to do it by putting into action steps I learned after reading the book Bidding to Buy by Aaron Amuchastegui and David Osborn. And yes, I did eventually get a job.

Atlanta, Georgia

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