How to Start Investing

[Tyson Scheutze]

Investor Origins Story: Part 1

When I began my career in real estate in 2005, I didn’t have a lot of money or a lot of knowledge. What I did have was time.

I used all of this time to intensely learn about real estate. Initially working as an apartment leasing agent for Barbara Cocoran-owned Citi-Habitats in the East Village of New York, I learned that Craigslist was where you listed every rental and doormen really knew everything about NYC real estate.

I enjoyed the experience of working as an agent, however I knew I wanted to be an investor. There was still the small issue of no knowledge and no money.

Not deterred, I spent a lot of time reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad, Gary Keller’s Millionaire Real Estate Investor, and scratching through deal projections for properties I couldn’t afford to buy. Besides analyzing hundreds of deals on paper, most important to my initial education was networking with investors by attending Real Estate Investor Association meetings.

Navigating the real estate info-education world of charlatans and snake-oil salesmen, my goal was to find the folks who were actually teaching and learning by doing.

My search eventually introduced me to working class New Yorkers like Eli and Marina, who, seeking a better life through passive income, created the Syracuse Connection which focused on buying property in the frozen tundra of upstate New York.

Some believed Syracuse had a promising future as a city looking to reinvent itself. There was talk of the city becoming a tech hub, proposals for portions of the city to be enclosed in a bubble to make the winters more hospitable and a huge mall/hotel development project called (ironically) Destiny.

Syracuse had a lot of things which failed to materialize, however what it undeniably had was cheap real estate. After nearly a year of looking at deals, I found a triplex on 1513 North State Street that I purchased for 50k and thought there was no way it could go wrong.

Everything went wrong, and this began my first day as an investor.

Nearly 20 years later in my investment career, I still expect for things to go wrong in my investments. However, I now have a deep and knowledgeable team at Auben Realty to increase likelihood for things to go right.