The Setup: What got us going

In Fall 2012, I stood over the grill on a weekend in my patio of my lovely German rented abode.  My then girlfriend, now wife, Jessica, and I were discussing our future and naturally finances came up.  Thankfully we had been focused in our formative years accomplishing Dave Ramsey-esque tasks such as building emergency funds and not adding to debt.  She held a rented condo in the Seattle area and I had never owned property.  We had plans to marry and an impending move to the DC-area.  At the time we were both in the military, she in the Navy and I in the Air Force, though she had submitted her papers to separate the following summer.  Jessica was a natural at finding ways to bend the curve to her will and as she pondered her next career move floated real estate as an avenue of investing approach.  We flirted with the idea of becoming moguls some day in the future, but the idea, much like the smoke from the grill, dissipated in the fresh fall air.  

Spring of 2013 brought on our impending moves.  The eagerness as Jessica looked to join the Beltway game that is DC, yet avoid working for the government, was coupled with a revamped intrigue in the rental market.  We had already decided to buy a place in the area, somewhat deferring to the age-old military officer adage that "I buy where ever the military sends me" mentality knowing that our DC stay would be temporary as I'd continue on in the AF and we'd eventually move thereby making us landlords at a distance.  We loosely (read Zillowed) the local area only to figure out that any additional investing we thought we could do wouldn't be in the greater DC-area so we turned our gaze to areas we knew better, predominantly being areas we'd lived before.  Other than my first stint in DC, I'd only been stationed overseas, whereas Jessica had West and East coast experiences to draw upon.  We used our knowledge of military bases and their anticipated longevity as market research to establish what our target renter class would pay.  We noticed a few areas with margin between those figures and focused solely on the VA Beach area.  Little did we know how to properly analyze a deal, but we salivated at $30K properties we knew to be in "good" areas that with a little love, should rent out easily to our target audience.  We had a plan (or so we thought).

Fall of 2013, after getting established in our new work environments we shifted our focus to  real estate.  Then I broke my knee in an accident involving inattentive crosswalk use and a curb.  It sucked.  It delayed our entry into real estate, but by Summer 2014 we were committed and thankfully slightly more educated.  We hadn't found BP yet, but we had watched the market and others (read cash-buyers) had also figured out that $30K properties plus $30K rehab would yield $100K+ pay-days.  We were temporarily out-matched yet determined.