Real Estate? I Dabble...

I’m submitting this writing after looking back at my old account details and realizing that – wow, it’s been nearly a decade since I joined the BiggerPockets community and I feel like I’m finally ready to talk about my journey. It makes me a bit anxious thinking about putting my life in full view for many people to see, but my mentor insists that I begin a sort of weekly blogging of sorts. At first, I thought “No way, not gonna happen”, but the more I thought about the idea of doing this and how much time has passed since I began I figured that maybe now is exactly the right time to do this. To be honest I’m not sure who I’m writing this for, but if this can inspire just one person to take action in their life for the better then I think I will consider this writing to be a success.

So, here goes.

I’m in my early 30’s now and I’ve spent my entire life moving around the Seattle-Tacoma region in Washington State. I’m the proud child of a single parent Chinese immigrant. I recall an early memory spending a lot of my pre-teen years in in-home daycares. I despised waking up in the twilight hours to be driven to a new place and falling asleep on a folding cot and then spending the rest of the day surrounded by kids 5+ years younger than me until my mom got off work to pick me up. And just when it felt like I was getting familiar enough with a place I would end up in a new place about six months later. I understood the sacrifices she had to make. She was working two jobs just to keep everything running smoothly and I was aware of that. I didn’t get to see her very much.

Shortly after I outgrew the need for daycares, we moved into a 2-story 3 bedroom 3 bathroom house. This happened shortly after we moved out of a 1-story duplex. She decided to do this because she wanted me to grow up having a nice life with a comfortable and stable environment.

Fast forward to high school – I lacked passion and didn’t have many friends so I spent most of my free time gaming. I didn’t have a father figure in my life, so I guess this is where my teenage angst started to appear. My only plan was to complete high school and figure out things slowly after that. My mom later dated a man who moved in with us and he suggested I could go into the field of Computer Aided Design (CAD) Drafting after noticing I spent a lot of time on the computer. “Sure”, I thought, “Why not?” So I eventually went to college to work on my AAS in Mechanical Drafting to pursue a career with Boeing.

My mom’s boyfriend would leave us during high school and we would fall into financial hardship that required us to downsize to an apartment across the street from her new place of employment. It was a small 1 bedroom apartment that often got damp and moldy around the windows. We hand-washed all of our clothes in the bathtub and I often wore the same clothes for a week at a time. I felt guilty that I let her give me the room and the only bed while she slept on the couch’s fold out mattress for the next couple of years. We didn’t share that many ‘I Love You’s’ growing up, but I understood this was an instance of a mother’s love. She insisted on me not getting a part-time job to help out because she wanted me to focus on my studies. She always stressed the importance of saving and spending within my means. I wouldn’t describe her as financially savvy, but this seemed like sound advice.

It was somewhere around this point in my life where I decided to strive to become something more and so that we wouldn’t live this way in the future.

During my internship class near the end of my degree, I met a person who was a Realtor. He seemed to really enjoy what he was doing when he chatted during his phone calls and I was curious to learn more about becoming like him. Long story short I took a break from finishing my degree to get a Realtor license to join his team. We worked together for about a year and I saw how much potential being self-employed had and wanted to become successful at it. I was brimming with excitement and even bought a nice suit and matching slacks, but I didn’t know where to get started. I wasn’t very social to begin with so I didn’t know what to say to people at an open house or how to ask my mentor for help or what I should be doing to improve. We worked together for about a year before deciding we weren’t a good fit. Afterwards, I spent another year going solo. During this time I got acquainted with a man who said he was an investor and I took him out to look at some affordable condos nearby. We met a few more times after that and discussed more topics related to investing. I was a bit envious because I liked the idea of entrepreneurship, but I felt that maybe it was a game too sophisticated for me to get into and I lacked the financial resources to get started. That and I felt discouraged from the lack of success in my own career as an agent. Ultimately, I was never able to help him purchase anything in the end, but that was alright because shortly after…

Then I heard about Rich Dad Poor Dad.

I was on my way out of the door of my dream real estate career and pondering about the drafting career again, but one day I heard an ad on the radio about learning to make large sums of money by learning to invest in real estate. It was a free seminar that changed my way of thinking about finances. There I learned that rich people have many streams of income and don’t rely solely on one. Instead of working a job for the next 30 to 40 years to scrape together a modest living and build someone else’s dream, I could be figuring out ways to increase my own income to out-earn what I could ever dream of saving from a typical job. That initial seminar led to a big upsell for a $30,000 course that I couldn’t justify to my mom to pay for, especially since she paid for my college tuition and the Realtor license that barely paid itself off. Luckily I found a couple who was also interested in the program and we split the bill evenly so I only ended up paying a third of the fee. I learned about wholesaling, lease-options, mobile home parks, and house flipping. After a seminar trip to Vegas and the feel-good butterflies faded away I found myself back at home with a mountain of coursework, not sure where to go from there; and a new mentor from the program that I grossly underutilized.

I had a vision for what my end goal looked like: A Lamborghini and a 5,000 sq ft mansion. I just didn’t know the path to take to get there. I suffered from what many in the industry called “Analysis Paralysis”. I spent far too much time analyzing every detail and I compiled notes to write a perfect handbook for myself to understand real estate investing before I would take any action. I was determined not to fall into the beginner pitfalls that others have mentioned before. I became obsessed with writing the handbook and used it as an excuse to delay getting started with investing. I decided that I had enough book knowledge and realized that I needed to learn through hands-on experience. I attended local REIA meetings which led me to my first flip (more on that in the future).

There were a lot of lessons from that first flip. For now, that’s a wrap as they say.