All Forum Posts by: Andrea F.

Welcome Andy! I'm from the Atlanta area and recently joined BP as well. I look forward to hearing about your adventures in Atlanta.

Congrats! I love that new rent check smell!

Charles - I haven't personally gotten to know J Scott, but he was one of the first people I started on following on BP. I recommend any new Atlanta folks, as well as those new to rehabbing/flipping to follow him and go to his site. I don't mean to sound like an advertisement, but his site is a great resource! It's also a great testament for BP - this site isn't just about the forum, but the links and resources that it can lead you to...

Charles - Thanks for the welcome!

Mike - Thanks for the advice. Learning the creative side of financing and raising funds is something I need to learn more about, and hope to gain from this community. I may be in touch with you at some point :)

I'll say I lurked until I was sure the site was genuine - I've been tired of getting my hopes up of finding a helpful online community, only to see you have to pay in order to do the most basic functions, enroll in a "program: or some sort of scam. I would communicate in your messaging that this is truly a community based site that lives and breaths through the people who use it...and by signing up, the user is only making it better.

There are a couple other things that might turn people off from taking it seriously - the design/structure is a little dated and the navigation can be difficult (people have mentioned that finding certain forums takes digging). Just a little love from a UX designer could get this site much more cohesive in no time. There's a lot of great content here, so it's natural to have those challenges. It just needs a little bit of architectural help to make the user experience smoother, faster and intuitive.

(I work in marketing and web design, so excuse me if my view is a little slanted in that direction!)

Greetings all, I'm very excited to have recently found the Bigger Pockets site, and after a week of reading everything I can on here, thought I'd introduce myself.

My partner and I are part-time real estate investors and have a small LLC in Atlanta, Georgia. We have been using cash and creative financing to purchase, rehab, and rent single family houses in the Atlanta area since December 2010. We have assembled a fantastic team, met great tenants (so far!) and even have potential tenants/referrals asking us when the next house will be ready.

Now that we have some experience and good resources, we are looking to expand our business, improve out strategy (perhaps flip in addition to rehab), and explore additional financing.

As for some background info:
We own 4 properties in Stone Mountain, Decatur and Atlanta. They are single family homes, 3 Bed/2Bath foreclosures, sale prices ranging from $20-28K and requiring $8-12k in rehab, in neighborhoods with comparable houses currently going for $65-90k. All houses have been paid in full, and are currently bringing in $800-900 monthly from tenants.

My partner and I are husband/wife with full-time jobs, personal home, and a second mortgage on a vacation rental property in Florida. We both have great credit.

We have been purchasing relatively low priced houses with cash, and now wonder wether we should "up" our price range for the sake of getting financing, or keep our strategy the same and look for more alternate forms of funding. We have also been purchasing properties for rentals, but are considering flipping in the near future depending on the property.

I would love to hear from others with more experience on how to take this to the next level and deal with financing.

Thanks,
Andrea