My First Investment Property

Dear BP,

I am now the proud owner of an 8 unit apartment building!! It’s my first property and man am I excited! Let me tell you how it all came to be so I can give you an example of the possibilities in real estate.

Starting out I had a negative bank account, $30+ thousand in student loans, almost $7,000 in credit card debt. I had just moved back in with parents after failing to close on a lease-option for a single family home I was planning a live in flip on (I realized this was not my best idea). I had a part time job as a bartender and I was a struggling real estate agent with 1 sale in my first year.

So now you know where I started, so I bet you’re thinking, “How in the world do you buy an 8 unit building then?” I have two answers for you. 1. I got lucky, though some would argue that “luck favors those who seek opportunity.” and 2. Once I found the deal I was able to put in the work to secure the deal.

Now obviously with my credit situation there was no way I was going to secure a loan on this building, luckily for me, I knew a few people in the real estate community. I had a friend and mentor help me pitch owner financing. I did everything he said and next thing I know, I had the building under contract for 10% down. The next trick was finding the 10%.

I was looking for hard money and asked my little brother (a true handyman) if he would come take a look at the building with me. While we were walking through taking pictures he said “I can fix that” about 100 times. By the time we were leaving he said, “I have some money in the bank for the down payment if you want to do it together.”

YES PLEASE!

This was a killer deal and who else would I want to go in on it with but my little brother?!

We got the details sorted, the money exchanged and we got to work on the building. It was a nonperforming 8 unit with 2 units rented but 1 was going to be a surefire eviction. Sure enough, a month later that tenant was gone. We are now up to 5 tenants with the next 3 units looking to be finished in the next 3 weeks.

The building is turning a profit and we are looking to acquire another here very shortly. The snowball is rolling, time to make it bigger.