All Forum Posts by: Colin Higgins

I too would say get your credit straight before investing elsewhere. Put those fires out before you plant seeds. No shame in taking a second to regroup.

I personally used my Florida license, it was dirt cheap. Dont get caught up in all the programs that offer tutoring and digital flash cards, live help, ect... the real learning comes after the license. Best of luck!

Perhaps structuring your day. Most days I have a good routine, every once and a while I fall off the wagon and lose direction.

 Hey Elijah

I personally did skill bridge myself this past winter. My program was not with the real estate ,but I did make a video about the process and all the hoops your unit will make you jump through. As for your license, get that now. You can most definitely get it in a month or two online if you study, no reason to wait. Once paired up with a brokerage for your program you'll be ready to strike with your license already in hand. Another interesting component of this is real estate generally speaking is 1099 commission based, not W-2, so I'm curious how this will play in with skill bridge. Skill bridge mandates, as you already know, that you may not be compensated as an employee. However you wont be an employee, you'll be an independent contractor. Further more, many active duty personnel are part time agents. I would imagine this comes down to the discretion of your commanding officer, check with your HR to see what air force instruction on this would be. Stoked for you! Good things to come.

 Hey Shikirah

I FEEL YOU. Both my girl and I were house hunting for a duplex somewhere in Florida with an FHA loan these past two months. I didn't even get to the point of making offers because we had to do a drive by and find find all the duplexs we were interested in to be in ROUGH areas. All of them... Glad I did the drive by every time. We also found that yes, many homes in the MLS remarks would not except FHA offers, so that narrowed it down pretty quick. We were super flexible because we both work from home and pretty much could go anywhere. We thought we had the state at our fingertips. Hours, days, and weeks of scouring the web, MLS, other resources looking for deals and researching neighborhoods, our hopes of house hacking started to fade. Damn, but the hunt continued, we eventually did shift to hunting for a single family home in a nice location, with growth, attractions, no HOA, and possibly air bnb a room while we live there.

Low and behold we did find an amazing little two bedroom home here in central Florida. I had booked the showing and didn't have any hopes in the property but figured "hey, it is on the way home. Lets check it out". The photos didn't do it justice. It had only been on the market one day, we made an offer immediately. Now we're under contract. Guess what, in many places it is still a sellers market. Both her and I are relieved to not be renting, excited to clean this up to be rental when we move and most of all, location, location, location. We LOVE the area. SO yes, at first it did feel defeating to have not locked down a duplex but we are moving in the right direction. The mortgage is within our means and there is opportunity to STR this in the future, good size lot to do many things with, good location. Not sure what your timeline is or if you have dependents coming with you on this journey, but it IS okay to pivot. We can't control the motion of the ocean. Like Hamp said, celebrate them all.

In the words of Rogan "be undeniable". The public will weed out what realtors they want and don't. IF it's not your age, it your hair, style of shirt, skin color, gender, facial hair, choice of car, tone of voice, ect... you cant appease everyone nor should you try. Become a subject matter expert in your lane and your knowledge will speak for itself. BE YOURSELF, they're going to find out what your are really like one way or another, save yourself and them the time. This is a personality matching business and learn the power of no, YOU do not have to service every client, find the good fit. Bring them value and set expectations, your age is irrelevant. You can out preform people who have been in the business for years. All the advice listed above is good; finding groups, who you want to target, ect but this is some food for thought as well. This was advice given to me from a top producer.

My brokerage has dozens of deals that will JV or need capital. We also have a dozen or more that are for sale. Anything from 1 million to 600 million. Central Florida (coast to coast). For information message me, we can work out specifics and find a good a fit.

What are your long term goals and what kind of feedback if any is your new agent giving you? I agree with @Paul De Luca that as an entry level deal, a good ol house hack would be a great use of your money.

Fix the hump. Buy once, cry once.

I think this is a good strategy to scale and comes down to the level of risk you are comfortable with. How many ways can this turn into a dumpster fire and what systems do you have in place to bail yourself out?