Hello again BP community

[Andrew Emery]

I just want to say hello and that it has been too long. I am now officially a real estate investor as of Feb 27, 2016. I bought my first property, a buy and hold townhouse, here in Colorado Springs. I then began the process of renovating the place, which took longer than expected. I don't know that i have ever been as busy in my life as I was between March and October of last year. Long story short I started a new job, in March, in the process of all of this and was sent to Africa for 2 months, unexpectedly, and sat holding the property until Oct 1st, 2016. This is when I finally rented it out. Took a break refied my current house to get my VA cert freed up and now I am under contract to buy our next house. We are buying this next one to live in and the one we are in now will be turned into a rental. Great news is that even though I sat on the townhouse and refied back to a full 30 on my current house, these two places have done nothing but appreciate. Thank the universe for a hot Colorado market. This weekend I actually have four days free and clear so I started packing, and this has given me a chance to reacquaint myself with my favorite podcast The BP podcast. @Brandon Turner is always encouraging us not to lurk and to post so here I am. I have to give huge credit to @Joshua Dorkin for creating BP. Even though I haven't been on here in a while I had listened to every podcast put out up until Feb of last year. I was also religiously on BP reading and learning. The biggest thing I learned is to take action! The next thing I have learned is to surround yourself with people you trust. I am an aircraft mechanic so trust is a huge part of my life. I have found a great realtor who is an investor as well and my lender is a guy I have know for 12 years. This makes all the difference. I have finally taken action. I am ready to be done with my current transaction so that I can access the equity in both of my rentals and once again hit the ground running. I wanted to put this out there for anyone person who may be lurking and afraid to jump and to say: JUMP IN THE WATER IS WARM!

I look forward to being more active here and to continue learning from everyone on here.