How I Started My Real Estate Investing Journey

I began my real estate investing journey one year ago. I was patiently awaiting commencement at my university as I completed my MBA in Finance after two years of working and schooling full-time. Weeks leading up to commencement and with the reality of me finally finishing school, I began to feel lost. For once, I had no plan after graduating and the default answer was work, save money, get married, have a kid, buy a house, retire at 65 and enjoy “retirement”. Don’t get me wrong, that all sounds nice, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I knew I didn’t want to live what society calls a “normal” life and work at a desk for 40 years. So I began soul searching, starting with our generations best tool, Google. So many questions ran through my keyboard:

1. - How can I retire early?
2. - How can I create passive income?
3. - How can I make money by investing?
4. - How do I get started?

I already began investing in stocks starting in 2017 and heavily became into Options Trading in 2018. I made money, I lost money. I already had some investing experience and I loved trading, but I did not feel comfortable having trading as my main source of income. As I continued my search for an answer, I came across real estate investing and owning rental properties, which was highly recommended for creating passive income. At first I was skeptical, real estate is supposed to be filled with sleazy agents and slumlords who only care about making commission and collecting rent. At first I dismissed the idea, I made excuses:

• - Houses are expensive
• - I don’t have money for a down payment
• - I’m going to get stuck with a home and paying a mortgage for 30 years
• - I don’t want to fix toilets at 4AM (coincidentally I had to fix a toilet in my tenants unit, just not at that time)

I kept researching passive income, and real estate was always in the top categories of every website I’d visit. Since real estate kept coming up, I finally decided to look into real estate a little more. I ultimately ended up buying “The Book on Rental Property Investing” by Brandon Turner of BiggerPockets. This book changed it all for me. I finished the book within a couple of days and was amazed at what real estate can really do for an investor. One line in the book that I still think about everyday is “Do you want to live an ordinary life or an extraordinary life?” It hit me because I wanted something more than ordinary. I ended up joining BiggerPockets.com as a member and began learning more about real estate. My perception of real estate agents and landlords changed after joining BiggerPockets. There are many genuine people out there that want the best and will do all they can for their clients and tenants. By July, two months after I graduated, I made my mind up, I’m going to purchase a 2-Family home, live in one unit and rent out the other house. House hacking is the common real estate term for this strategy. I first presented the idea to my significant other, who supported me and the idea of me and her moving in together in a 2-family home. Then, I began to plan and presented the idea to my father, who got me into investing. We agreed that investing in real estate would be the best long term solution for all our futures. So I got to work. I spent many nights analyzing 2 family properties that would generate a monthly cash flow. I researched rental markets in different towns and see what would be the best area for us. I networked with a couple of agents, before connecting with one on the BiggerPockets forum. He eventually became my agent to represent me in my first home purchase and a great friend. Me, my girlfriend, my parents and my agent began viewing properties in August. The process of finding a property was stressful. Beaten by higher offers, a failed off market deal and the fear of getting rejected again and again weighed on my mind. However, after almost 2 months, we got an offer accepted on October 13th! We officially closed on the property on November 13th and officially moved in with my significant other November 28th.