Hello BP! First time poster here from Chicago. I've been doing the deep dive on the podcasts and about to finish Brandon's book on Real Estate Investing. I'm hoping to get into my first house hack in the Chicago area by sometime in 2025 but I have a couple hurdles and would love some advice from this fantastic community. I'll share my hurdles and a couple advantages and hopefully get all my problems solved, right?

HURDLES:

*About $230k in student loan debt. I know, it's insane.

*Getting married in September so any savings I have is on the back burner for that and we'll probably be starting from scratch.

*Never owned Real Estate.

*Credit is low to mid 600s due to high credit utilization as a result of covid. (Hope to have this resolved by October)

ADVANTAGES:

*I'm nearly two years into a career as a Property Manager in a larger company (First stint as an Assistant Manager in a 22 building portfolio consisting of Class B to C properties and over 500 units, and was recently promoted to our Luxury, Class A division with 100 units in 2 buildings).

*Due to my job, I have access to some brilliant people as well as trades people all across the board and will also have a broker's license.

*Also due to my job, I should be able to take advantage of our processes and bookkeeping department at a highly discounted price.

*My future wife is supportive and would be including her income to DTI calculations as well as potential savings.

*I have a high level of ambition and drive and will do what it takes to make this dream happen.

GOAL:

Obviously, financial freedom. But to start off, I'd like to find a 3 or 4 plex, value add, House Hack in Chicago at $800k or lower but can appraise at 20% higher. We'd live there for 1 to 2 years while saving on not paying rent and building equity.

After that, my first milestone would be $10k in cash flow per month within 5 years.

And then eventually we'd like to get some short term rentals in a few ideal places around the country that we can have occasionally for personal use.

Oh, and the student loan debt. I'd like that gone too.

So... how do I get there? What kind of loan products should I be looking at? What are my first steps? What other questions should I be asking? Looking forward to your responses!

Chicago, Illinois

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