First brand new investment attempt

[David Sray]

Hi folks!

I thought I'd just post a quick note in here to begin documenting my journey into additional real estate. My wife and I are putting in our first offer on a fourplex in the area surrounding Austin today! This is simultaneously scary as hell and exciting for me, as I never really figured I'd be a landlord. I can honestly say that the info and podcast on BiggerPockets has pushed me out of my comfort zone into whole-heartedly embracing real estate as a long-term wealth-building strategy. Trying to move past fear and do this!

To provide just a snippet of background, we sort of happened upon real estate investing when we decide to move out of our first 3/2 house in Round Rock,TX and relocate a bit north, into Georgetown. After hearing all the horror stories from basically every corner, we chose to keep our old house and rent it out to a lady and her kids on a two-year lease without knowing a thing about how to be a landlord. Thankfully we had about the best renter you could imagine starting out, and I was able to handle all maintenance with minimal fuss and expense (i.e, toilet tank fix & garbage disposal). She has moved on, but through the process of bringing on new renters in June, I realized that it might be possible to do this across multiple properties. This lead me to BiggerPockets, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and my rapidly expanding attempts to learn about real estate.

I know we are in a multiple offer situation (i.e, freaking Austin area) and we may not get it because I won't go over asking price, but I am excited to have taken this first step into the unknown to try to build wealth. Conservatively, I think this place could be around 10% cash on cash, but it's near the top range of what we can get on a conventional loan. So if it works out, I'm ready to do this and learn! If this isn't the unit, I'm confident we'll find something else. 

Just feeling kinda anxious and excited at the same time and thought I'd share.