We did it! We hit our investment goal!

[Brie Schmidt]

Last week we hit our investment goal of $35k a month gross rental income. We bought our first investment property in August 2011 and the vast majority of our growth has happened in the past 10 months. We (my husband and I) now own 21 buildings and 59 units in Chicago and Milwaukee.

If you have been following my story I did a podcast last July (www.biggerpockets/com/show78 ) when I had just quit my job and we were just closing on our first out of state properties. Since then life has been pretty crazy and I did an update 2 months ago on what has been going on ( http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/223/topics/178935-it-has-been-8-months-since-i-left-my-job-and )

Life is still crazy, especially since we just got back from Mexico and are leaving for a two week trip to Europe this week… but I foresee a more steady and manageable pace moving forward.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. We have had our fair share of problems. Some buildings were an easy takeover where the tenants stayed, paid rent, and didn’t cause problems. Some we had tenants leave in the middle of the night or leave the place trashed. Some properties were profitable from day one and some won’t be profitable for at least a year. The good thing is because we have scale it all balances out and we are not putting our own money into them every month.

BP has been such a huge part of my success. I gained the confidence I needed to go into this full time and have met some amazing friends who have helped me so much along the way.

I am looking forward to this much needed vacation and returning in June fully recharged and ready to go!

[Hugh C.]

Originally posted by @Brie Schmidt:

@Derek Carroll- About half our portfolio is in Chicago with traditional residential financing. We were able to cash out on some of our appreciation to buy the rest with 80% LTV commercial loans. We borrowed $100k from my brother to push us past the goal line and now we will be pulling more equity out of Chicago to pay him back.

@Steve Perkins- It has been beyond my wildest dreams, I honestly barely recognize myself and didn't know I had it in me to do all this.  

@carl c - Thanks!

@Matt Cramer Thanks!

Brie,

I'm sure you are using BP's guidelines about cash flow and you are careful about not pulling too much cash out on your appreciation.  As with my business partner ventures, my own rental properties are never leveraged too the max even if the current net rental income can cover the new loan.  One never knows what may occur to cause net rental income to suddenly drop for a while.  So many "investors" do not consider that scenario as they were pulling cash out of all the built up equity.  In almost 30 years of ups and downs of real estate I have not had any forced loss of real estate because all the loans were easily covered by even dropping rental income.   Rental income does not always go up each year.  Keep you wildest dreams from turning into nightmares.

Hugh