7 properties, with 3 methods, in 12 months. On a military salary

[David Sanford]

I have been investing in real estate since June of 2015. It all started as a hobby of some sort for a little extra cash after reading Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My first house ever purchased was a short sale that I picked up in June of 2012 for $135,000 that my wife and I lived in for about 3 years. Within those 3 years we updated the flooring and put some fresh paint on the walls.. nothing major at all, maybe around $5,000 total in improvements. Fast forward to the summer of 2015 when I purchased a bigger home to move into decided to rent out the first home. We had it appraised and it came in at $190,000! Not only were we excited about the equity we built, but after renting it out it cash flowed about $500 profit per month. This first deal gave me the itch so we picked up a few more in 2016 and had close to the same results. Fast forward again to the summer of 2017 when I decided to shift my realestate into a higher gear. Now, while being in the military has some perks, the pay is not generally one of those perks. I had to find creative ways to continue to grow my business but knew very few ways. I was away for a military school when I stumbled upon a YouTube video by BiggerPockets where I learned about the BRRRR method! Genius! I instantly cashout refinanced my first home and pocketed about $20,000. I used this, plus $10,000 I had saved up, to buy 2 more rentals as a package deal with a conventional 30 year mortgage with 20% down. This was method number 1, which got me 2 houses out of 7 within this 12 month period. I then did another cashout on a rental I bought in 2016 and used that money to buy 1 more rental, which made 3 out of 7. Now I was out of properties that made sense to cashout and had to think of another way to fund more rentals. It was at this time I attempted to find some seller financed deals where I got really fortunate. I reached out to a investor that I purchased a home from previously and asked him if he had any rentals he would be willing to seller finance, and scored 3 more rentals for no money down! This was method number 2 which now added up to 6 houses within this period. For the third method, I decided to give wholesaling a shot and put out about a dozen bandit signs. I got a call and contracted a house for $120k that needed about $20k in renovations and would sell for about $200k. Instead of finding a buyer, I decided this would be my chance to start flipping and I aggressively started searching for a hard money lender. I eventually found a lender and just closed on deal number 7 within the past 12 months using 3 different funding methods!

[Markian Sich]

@David Sanford That's awesome brother! That is classic Military house hacking right there! You planning on getting into commercial at all? or are you just planning on spiraling your strategy out of control (in a good way)!