All Forum Posts by: Bryce Jamison

Great mentality! You're not asking for something for nothing!

I don't think your target audience is necessarily on the forums looking for folks like you, so I recommend a more targeted approach. To me this means directly reaching out to the people you'd like to mentor you, in person if possible. This could be a local realtor, investor, contractor, appraiser, property manager, whatever.

It also means having what you're offering ready and tailored to the individual. When you say you'll do whatever, even with a list like this, you're putting the burden on them to determine what to do with you and creating another barrier to entry for yourself. 

What you do specifically depends on the mentor. For an investor you could "drive for dollars" then use the deal calculator on this site to create reports of deals that makes sense in your area. If you took that to a meetup and gave it to every investor you met, I bet one would be willing to talk to you. 

For everyone thinking about getting into real estate investing, I recommend spending at least 6 months educating yourself through websites likes this and its family of books and podcast, other real estate podcast, books at the library, and local meetups. After 6 months you'll know what strategy you want to deploy, and have the confidence and knowledge to do it.

This will also give you time to pay off any consumer debt, save an emergency fund, and start saving for a new property. You can also use the time to learn everything you can about your target market using websites like Zillow.

I'd recommend spending the next 6 months doing as much of the below things...

1: Consuming as much knowledge as possible through websites like this and its family of books and podcast, other podcast from people like David Greene, Rob Abasolo, & Graham Stephan, and reading books from the library.

2: Looking at the types of properties in the area you want them on Zillow. You can use the deal analyzer calculator on this site to determine the numbers. If you do this enough you'll know almost instantly if a property is a "good deal" based on asking price, location, size, and condition. View as many properties in person as you can too.

3. Attending as many local real estate meetups as possible.

If someone spent the same amount of time I spend wasting on the phone doing the above 3 things for 6 months, they would have the knowledge and confidence to invest in their first property.

Based on your post, I'd move somewhere else. If you know you don't want to be there long term, the sooner you move the sooner you'll start building a new network.

Starting as a brand new, early twenties, real estate agent with no experience or connections is going to be very hard. I'd recommend connecting with a local trusted firm and start doing open houses for the experienced agents to start meeting clients, getting reps, and learning.

Also get active in the community to meet folks. You could coach pee wee ball and pick up parents as clients! Attend every real estate meetup you can. You may even be able to work for a property management company. Your current renters could become future buyers. You could get a part time job at Lowes, Home Depot, or wherever to start meeting contractors in the area. 

I'm a huge proponent of having your first investment be as easy as possible. To me, this means a SFH used as a LTR within a 20-30 minute drive of you. If you run into vacancy, I'd recommend lowering the rent $50-100 bucks a week until someone is interested. I'd rather loose $100 a month than 2-3 monthly rent payments. Zillow makes renting out properties super easy.

Cashflow is getting harder to find. What I've seen lately is most cash flowing properties are in C, or lower, areas which come with a lot of headache. If you can find something that breaks even after all expenses like repairs, CAPEX, vacancy, etc, and makes a few extra bucks, it may be a win. Hopefully we'll be able to reinvest to lower rates eventually, and long term I'd expect the property to appreciate.

Getting a few months experience with an "easy" deal will give you more confidence and knowledge to take o more complex deals.

I agree with the other guys. Build your real estate business up slow and steady until you can switch to it full time, but to answer your question...

If I had 500K and wanted to make 300K a year in real estate, at a minimum, I'd get my real estate license. If you're crushing it, you can make 300K a year buying and selling housings. I think I'd then use the 500K to buy properties and open a management company managing them and other people's properties. 

The problem is it's going to be hard to make 300K a year only starting with 500K. Maybe you could get into partnerships to better leverage the 500K into more properties. It'd take a tremendous amount of work, but some combination commissions and management fees could get you to 300K a year. Probably not year one, but eventually.

Depending on how you're maintaining your books I could see a loan officer lending to you based on your profit and track record over the last 10 years. You can also check out DSCR loans that lend based off the properties expected income, not your personal DTI. Either option will most likely have a higher rate than someone buying a personal residence, but nothing in your questions makes me think you can't get mortgages.

If you've been good at, and like, finding tenants and maintaining houses, you could start your own property management company. In NC you need an RE license, so definitely check the requirements in NY. You could make money managing other people's properties that you could then use to buy more property for yourself!

You're in the right place!

If you spend the next 6 months on these forums, listing to the family of BP podcast, reading investing books from your library, and spending a couple of hours a week on Zillow becoming an expert on your market, I bet you'd have the knowledge to buy your first property.

You can go to local real estate meetups too to meet other like minded individuals.

Check out Dave Ramsey's baby steps. They're a good place to start to get your personal finances under control.

They're basically pay off consumer debt, like your car, get an emergency fund, then start funding things like retirement. kids college, and a house. He's not a fan of using debt to get investment property, but his advice is still sound.

I'd wait until I was out of debt and had an emergency fund saved up before I started thinking about investing in real estate. I imagine you could do that by 23, then buy a primary residence to house hack, repeat every 2 years, and be a multimillionaire at 35.

It depends. If you have an emergency fund, aren't saving cash for another investment, and are fairly conservative when it comes to debt, then absolutely. Every extra dollar you put towards it will save you 6.375%, so it's basically a savings account with the same rate.

If you have an emergency fund, need cash for other investments, and like to leverage debt more, I'd save all extra cash for the next investment and not pay extra on the principle. 

There's also a middle ground. Maybe you pay an extra $100 a month instead of an extra $500. There's no "wrong choice". You can always save the cash and decide a year later to throw it at the mortgage.