My First Rental - Success

[Brandon V.]

Hi BP!

I just wanted to share my first rental story from Milwaukee, WI. 

I found bigger pockets about 6 months ago right after I bought my first real estate property that is currently my primary residence.  Luckily I was a good negotiator and didn't find too bad of a deal for not really knowing anything about real estate other than wanting to build equity and stop wasting money paying rent.  Then I found BP and immediately started reading and learning about how to jump in.  My biggest fear was finding tenants and not having the experience needed.  After searching the forums for awhile I decided to start my venture into house hacking.  I posted up an ad on Craigslist and to my surprise had 10 hits within four hours for renting out the second bedroom in my condo.  I found my current roommate and we get along great and I was successfully house hacking and hooked....

After that I spent the next three months looking up deals and analyzing them every single day and going to the webinars, and listening to podcasts and reading books. As I was gaining knowledge I ran into several roadblocks. The first roadblock was finding the right bank as my lender with my condo was requiring 20% down for a SFH and 30% for anything else. After searching out a couple of options I found one that was fairly cheap with closing costs and only required 25% down. The next roadblock was finding funding as I just purchased my condo and didn't have a lot left to put down. I was able to convince some of my family members to give me a loan that the bank accepted as part of a down payment for an investment property. Then I finally found the right deal. I must have analyzed it ten times and looked it over twice. It was a duplex that needed a little bit of work but nothing I couldn't manage while working full time. It had inherited tenants in the upper unit that had lower market rents (and we all know the pros and cons of that). We finally reached an accepted offer and immediately the upper tenants decided to move out. I managed to close on the deal one month ago and was able to get the renovations done for the lower unit and rent it out on Feb 1st with a great tenant. I just put out an ad for the upper unit at the current market rate and have many applicants lined up with the ad being one day old.

Overall the property I bought was $105,000, I have about $12,000 invested in it and it rents for $1,600 a month (or will soon). My estimated CF is around $300 a month giving me about a 30% COCR and I am truly excited and pumped to be apart of the community and look forward to more deals down the road!