All Forum Posts by: Brad Fithian Jr

Welcome @Kevin A. !

You are in the right place to learn. The books listed so far are all great. I have found What Every Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow is a good one, but it really all depends on your strategy. Find out the way you want to invest in real estate and then dive into educating yourself on how to make that successful. Good luck in everything! 

Welcome to BP!

Great to keep hearing people make things happen in NJ. I am right around the corner and still green myself but I have a desire to invest in the Glassboro/Rowan area and have been waiting for the right opportunity for me and my wife. I am interested on hearing more about this property and what your plans are moving forward? SFR? Plex?

Hey Ian,

There are quite a few articles that have the best real estate books. Here are some links:

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/04/14...

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/10/14...

I would browse through the ones that deal with the topics you are looking for.

2 that are mentioned in these posts and that I have personally read are Landlording on Autopilot and What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cashflow. They should both provide a sound foundation for you to then go dig deeper and grow in your real estate literacy.

Best of luck to you.

In extreme south jersey where I am at there are a few towns that have decent taxes.

@Timothy Gleason 

SFR- 3 beds/1bath, 1100 sq/ft.

It was hard to believe. It's in a small town just underneath the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I was blessed with an amazing deal. 

Thanks @Shaun Weekes That is what we are hoping for!

@Mike Moles Thanks! Keep it up. You can't underestimate the value of learning. You are on the right site for it. Good luck or rather, praying for blessings on your way to those properties.

Thanks @Matt Devincenzo ! and thank you for the info. Let me ask you question. So let's say I wanted to refinance in a month after the property is rehabbed a bit. Would the appraisal stay basically the same because that is what I paid for it, or would I have added value and now be able to cash out with the available forced equity? Just wondering. 

BTW, I love the Acts 2:42 tag at the bottom! Great stuff. 

Thanks! @Brandon Turner @Darnell Kramer @Micheal Waldrup 

Well, I wish I had some crazy interesting story behind this acquisition and how I found it but the truth is it was pretty straight forward. I found it on the MLS. I have quite a few saved searches that get automatically emailed to me when a new property gets listed on sites like Redfin.com, Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia. I just set my criteria and check my email. This one popped up and I immediately called my Realtor to look at it. We were just the first to get it under contract after I looked at it.

I guess the only interesting thing was that after we offered and got it under contract, another person offered a full-price, cash offer. The seller's Realtor actually told my Realtor that she wanted the deal to fall through. We just had to make sure we got all the paperwork done right and on-time and there were no snags. Everything went smooth. Now its just a matter of getting the rehab work finished. Taking it slow, making sure I don't miss anything so that we can build processes and scale up faster.

Monday, June 30th me and my closed on the purchase our first buy and hold property! I have been learning and learning and studying and looking and analyzing....probably like a lot of people right now. Well, we finally did it! So if you are out there right now and are thinking to yourself that this will never happen, don't give up. I have been researching and studying and analyzing properties for over a year. Things will come in time, and patience will prove your greatest asset. Just hang it their, it will happen. Our first steps to financial freedom and the life that we desire. So here is the deal:

Purchase Price: $45,000

PITI: $409.62

Loan: 5/1 ARM, 3.5%, 20% down payment

Estimated Rent: $1200/month

15% Maintenance/ month: $180

8% Vacancy/ month: $96

Cash Flow/month: $514.38

So we did need a good chuck out of our pockets, which kind of limits our capital for the immediate future. This leads me to my negative, which I am still not %100 clear on yet. I thought that the house would be appraised at higher than it was. It still could be, but that doesn't see likely. That's okay though because at the end of the day, we are still cash flowing over $500 a month!

So there are the numbers. Wow. Never thought a year ago we would ACTUALLY own our first rental property. About another 1-2K in rehab work before we rent it out and we are in business. This IS possible!