Starting in Real Estate Investing

The past year has been a roller coaster. Michael and I decided to start real estate investing. We bought 5 rentals, started our first rehab and almost destroyed our lives in the process. Here is our story.

We originally started with property management. We set up an LLC and started talking to friends we knew who had rental properties. We had a couple people who initially said they didn’t want to manage their rentals anymore and would like Michael to do it for them. We also started buying 5 houses on contract from Michael’s father and assumed he could make enough to cover his own bills and maybe enough to fix up the rentals and buy more. He makes some money as a landlord but his expenses are a lot higher than he thought and he does not like working with tenants. Michael wanted to do something more.

I was anticipating going away to an Army school for a few months and Michael felt like he needed something to do while I was gone. He heard the advertisement on the radio for few hours of free training in real estate investment. I encourage him to go even though I was going to be working while it was going on. He took his son Travis. They came back from the first free event pumped up and ready to go make money in real estate. They decided to pay a little and attend the next training to learn even more. I once again had to work and was not able to attend.

They came back the first night of the 3 day training even more pumped and ready to sign up for the whole thing. I missed all the training and initially felt like the whole thing was a hard sell to get money out of people who are eager to make a better life for themselves. I really wanted to learn more and I didn’t like the high pressure technique of making you decide to pay the very next day before you had time to come down off their emotional high and think about it. Everything seemed very salesy and designed more to separate people from their money than to actually prepare someone to make money.

Michael went ahead and signed up for the lowest cost program on the second day. It was all he felt he could afford and he didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity. After many hours of discussion I finally broke down and paid for the rest of the training program. I mostly did it because I felt I needed to show Michael that I trusted him, I supported him, and I felt he could be successful. Several times we have regretted this decision and he has told me I should have stood up to him and refused instead. I don’t engage in would have, could have thinking so I can only say that we are going to make the best of our decision to jump fully in with both feet.

If you are personally interested in learning to invest in real estate please let us tell you what your options are so you can make a more informed decision than we did.