Entry1: My Introduction

Introduction:

     My name is Timothy Casallas, 29, and I am from Queens, New York. I am currently serving active duty in the United States Marine Corps and as you might guess, it takes up a lot of my time. This blog is more of a journal that I will use as a reference to learn from my mistakes and also remember key things that may have worked along the journey of investing in real estate. This journal is also for anyone that wants to follow along. I look forward to hearing advice and receiving comments as time goes on! I really hope that this journal ends up being a blueprint of success in the future if everything works out the way I hope it will. This is also my first ever blog so I'm sure I'll get better at this with experience.

My progress so far:

    I officially started my real estate adventure in 2016. Before that I did co-own a co op in Queens but it wasn't as an investment. For this reason, I consider my actual start with the purchase of my single family home in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I'll get into more details of my current properties in later posts including the methods I used to purchase them as well as the numbers behind them. I will be as accurate as I can and you will all be able to see my mistakes and shortcomings as I learn the game. In July 2017 I purchased my second property. It is a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo in Niceville, Florida. This is the one I currently live in as I house hack.

The near future:

   With the military it can be hard to really know what your next step is going to be because it can change with the snap of a finger it seems. For instance, as of last week I thought my next duty station was going to be Okinawa, Japan and now it turns out it will be Yuma, Arizona. Big difference! I've learned to roll with the punches and take life as it comes so right now I have started to dig into the Yuma market and learn as much as I can. My current timetable for moving to Yuma is set to April of 2018 and that really is just around the corner. 

The bigger picture:

   Finally, my goals are broken up into many smaller milestones that I hope to one day lead me to my main mission. I hope to one day be able to afford real estate in New York City and operate right from where I started. It seems like I travel the world just to hopefully one day end up back at home. In the meantime I treat it like a game of monopoly where I try to collect as many green houses that I can and trade them in for red hotels. As long as I learn along the way I consider my experiences and journey a success. With that said I try not to lose too much money as I learn. My plan of attack is to scale up with each purchase. I have  my single family home and condo, so my next step won't be anything less than a multi-family. If I buy a duplex, I hope my next investment will be something even bigger than that and so on and so forth.

Conclusion:

   I am still very new so this is a perfect time in my mind to start recording a journal. I'm hungry and refuse to fail no matter how many obstacles get thrown my way. As of right now I don't have a set timeline of how many posts I will make or when. I am thinking I will make new entries as important information begins to pile up. The next two entries will be a breakdown of my North Carolina and Florida houses respectively and they will be coming up very shortly. I hope I get to hear from the people of Bigger Pockets that are both experienced and new to the game as I value all knowledge and info. Thanks for stopping by!