Introduction - New to Real Estate

[Gregg Pathiakis]

Hello all! My name is Gregg. I am a 37-year-old from Massachusetts. My husband, Brian, and I have been brainstorming ways to increase our income so that we can live comfortably through retirement. Brian recently thought of real estate rentals so I bought him Brandon's book for his birthday. He has already read it cover to cover. I'm about 5 chapters in myself. We are sitting down tonight with a friend of ours who is already involved in rentals to get his advice and guidance. Our biggest worry is that, living in Massachusetts, it's going to be hard to find affordable properties and still have cash flow. We're hoping our friend can lessen that worry. 

Overall, I am overwhelmed by everything at the moment. But I love numbers. I am already envisioning Excel spreadsheets that I can create to analyze deals and calculate things like cash flow.  We believe we are in a good starting position, though. Our current residence (a condo) only has about 100k left on the mortgage and the property is valued at just over 200k. On top of that, we have about 50k in the bank. We're not sure if we want to rent out of condo and live in a unit of a multi-family or sell the condo, but either way, our credit scores are both over 700 so we're hoping we can make it work. I do have credit card debt (off hand, I'd say it's about 10k) which I assume I should pay off before anything else.

So, that's my story. I haven't read any other introductions so I'm hoping this was ok. I look forward to getting involved in this board and getting started!