The Start of My Real Estate Journey

This is my first time ever writing a blog. 

I remember at some point when I was in college, reading two books that really got me interested in real estate.  One was Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad which I read while on vacation with my family.  I don't think I've ever gone through book as quickly as I read that book... I must have went through the whole thing in 2 days sitting on the beach.  The other book was called something like "Millionaire By Thirty".  After reading both of these books I was totally sold on real estate as an investment.  Other than liking what I had read so far, I didn't know much and didn't have any sort of plan.  But I remember thinking that renting an apartment seemed like a terrible idea.  Why not just buy?  I thought somehow I would be able to afford to buy a house right out of college without any money saved.  That didn't exactly work out and I ended up renting for about 3 years before buying my first property.  

I started seriously looking to buy a house in early 2014 because I had enough money saved up at that point.  One of my roommates had an Aunt who was a realtor so she started showing me houses.  Then at some point, I decided that I would find a different realtor and to be honest, I don't even know how I ended up with the realtor that I did.  But...I started looking at houses with Realtor #2.. mostly looking in Conshohocken which is where I lived at the time.  It's a nice suburb just outside of Philadelphia.  At that time, Conshohocken was a pretty hot market.  I looked at several townhouses and twins in my price range, but they all seemed a little bit too expensive for me.  So after looking at a few in Conshohocken, I decided that I needed to look in a different town because properties were too expensive for me there.  So I looked to the nearby town of Bridgeport.  

Bridgeport is a little more blue collar than Conshohocken and homes are more affordable.  It's in a very good school district and has very little crime.  I had been there a few times and thought it seemed like a nice little down, and felt comfortable buying there.  I looked at three houses in Bridgeport before making my first offer on a house that had been separated into two separate living areas.  It isn't quite a duplex because the two "apartments" weren't separated very well... only by a door located at the top of the steps.  But... I decided to put an offer in on it because it worked perfectly for what I wanted to do at the time.  I could have roommates living downstairs to help pay the rent, while I had my own private kitchen, living room, bathroom, and bedroom upstairs.  It wasn't perfect but it worked for me.  I was able to buy the house with 3.5% down for $170,000 with receiving $7,500 back from the sellers at closing to repair a few issues noted during my inspection.  So many things went wrong during the process of buying the house, and I ended up essentially buying the house "as-is" because I was responsible for a list of about 15 items that I needed to completed before getting a U&O certificate.  Thinking back, it was stupid of me to accept those terms... we were so far into the process when the sellers decided they weren't going to do any more repairs.  There were no other offers or interest in the property as far as I knew.... but I was just ready to finally close and decided that I would take the property as-is and deal with the problems later.    But... I ended up buying the property as-is and doing an almost complete cosmetic renovation while living there.  I did a lot of the work myself, had friends help with a lot of things, and hired out some tasks.  Working on that house was an awesome learning experience in a lot of ways.  However, it ended up costing me way too much money and taking way too much time.  

About a year after I bought the house I ended up taking a job in New Jersey with plans to move to Philadelphia as soon as I could.  I wanted to live in the city and it would also be much closer and more convenient for me to get to work.  In October of 2016 I was able to find tenants to rent out my whole house and I moved out of there into a house that I currently rent in Philadelphia.  Now I am officially a landlord! There have been a few hiccups so far but nothing major.  The overall process of finding the tenants went fairly smoothly as I had lots of good information here on BiggerPockets and had talked to quite a few landlords that I met through my local REI group.  I can't say enough positive things about BiggerPockets and the Diversified Investor's Group (DIG) in the Philadelphia area.  Without these two resources, things would have been much more difficult and I would have made many more mistakes than I did.  And I've made plenty already!

Looking back on my first investment property, there are obviously a ton of mistakes that I've made.  I paid too much for the property, I let the sellers change the terms of the agreement last minutes without reducing the sales price, I didn't have a clear plan for the renovation work, and didn't even really have a budget other than what I could afford.  However, even with all the mistakes I made, I ended up with a cash-flowing property in a good area with about 20% equity at this time.  From that one property, I've learned so much that will help me do better on the next one.  I'm currently searching for my next investment property, and I've committed to not settling for a mediocre investment this time.  I plan on doing a B-R-R-R deal for my second property.  My next blog post will focus on my efforts to find my second investment property.