How it all started!

Hi everyone! So, after almost 2 years studying and taking action in Real Estate, I thought it would be a great idea to share the difficulties and challenges that I faced, and even be able to share a little bit of my knowledge with you guys and gals.

Before I jump into my post, I think would be nice to introduce myself. I'm Stefano, a 40 year old brazilian guy that moved to the USA in 2015. I work for a big corporation (meaning a 9 to 5 job) and decided it was time for me to stop the rat race and begin working for myself. (Hopefully REI will allow me to be 100% focused on my own business soon). 

I always wanted to fix and flip houses, even before all the hype with HGTV shows. I just made total sense to me to buy a discounted house, fix it efficiently, and sell it for a profit. 

So the first that I tried to do was educating myself. I made a profile here in BiggerPockets, and started reading pretty much everything about house flipping, analyzing deals, motivated sellers, distressed properties, how to find deals, how to fund deals (omg, that one is hard!!!) and so on.

And, BiggerPockets was THE place for me to be. Really. There are so much free content, with extreme quality, that you should NEVER ever pay for any guru or real estate course. I bought the amazing book "The Book on Flipping Houses" and "The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs" both published by BiggerPockets. And sincerely? They are both AMAZING. There's so much information there, that it blew my mind.

But most important: I was taking my time... I was reading books, listening to the BP Podcasts, reading forum and blog posts, just trying to absorb as much information as I could. One thing at a time. I really think that being patient was one of the best things I could do, because usually I'm so anxious about jumping into stuff, that I really think that taking the time to absorb all the new information was the best I could do.

After almost one year studying like a maniac, as soon as 2018 started I followed Brandon Turner's advice and set a goal for me: in 2018, I'll fix and flip 2 houses.

Believe it or not, self help or not, but setting that goal was life changing for me. I knew that I had to quit the analysis paralysis, take some action, and start doing it. So, I did what most of the investors in the forums told me to do: I started networking.

I started going to some REI clubs and events near New Jersey where I live, and started to talk to people. And to be honest, I can't stress enough how important that was to me. Leaving behind the computer screen and moving into the real Real Estate Investing world was fantastic. Get to know real investors, people that live out of it. It blew my mind how much information I could learn from simply talking to those guys for 5 minutes.

But still, I wanted to jump into one deal. So I started networking with wholesalers, and one of them invited me to grab a cup of coffee. On that meeting, the guy asked me if I had any money, which I had: $25k. That's all I had to start investing. It may sound too much (or even too little) but there, right in front of me, was the opportunity that I was looking for: I could become part in a JV to fix and flip a house (I'll explain that better in another post). 

So, they had a property in mind, I had already created my LLC and my We Buy Houses in NJ website, I had the money aligned. I had read and studied like a maniac. And finally I was ready to give the final jump and finally buy the first house to fix and flip. Which I did! But that deserves its own blog post, because, oh my, that was a hell of an adventure!

I hope you guys enjoy this post, and feel free to shoot me an e-mail at [email protected]

Thanks!