All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Jason PhillipsYea man, the car business is tough. Did it for almost 2 years. Loving real estate a LOT more! Looking forward to seeing your successes.

Will do @Cody Barrett... Thanks!

@JD MartinThanks for the tip.

• How you got financing    /////    I bought the properties at a really great deal. They are high cash flowing and I bought them under market price. Finding a good deal makes financing easier. I used two financing methods. 1. The property was financed by the previous owner with a really small local bank. I simply asked the local bank if they would be willing to keep the property on their books and simply switch owners. I provided my credit information to them (I had a 720 beacon score) and that was pretty much it. 2. I used private money for the down payment. The deal was able to still cashflow really well paying a 10-year amortized loan at an 8% APR to my private lender.
• How much you started with   /////    $0. I used none of my own money for this deal. Thanks to @Brandon Turner's book, Investing with Low and No Money Down.
• How you learned how to do any of the work    /////    I have the ability to do some of the work myself, but I haven't been. My business partner/mentor has relationships with subcontractors that we have used on all of the projects we've been involved in. What I have found though is, if you don't have contractors, Craigslist is a great place to find them. Also, show up at HomeDepot on a Saturday morning and walk around the parking lot taking pictures of sub's magnetic stickers on their trucks saying what they do and their phone numbers.

Hope this helps other newbies like me.

@Brandon Turner@Joshua Dorkin

I just recently closed on my first and my twenty-fourth rental property at the same closing table! I have BP to thank, really. Stumbling upon BiggerPockets when I was about 18 felt like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant of real estate information! It’s hard to know where to start! I stayed up late every night reading blogs, watching videos, and listening to the BiggerPockets podcast. I couldn’t get enough!

All that information, however, is useless without putting it into practice. During this time, I was working a full time job in the car business. Some of you can testify; working 60-70 hours a week can really motivate you to look for an alternative occupation! However, that season wasn’t all bad. I was able to save a good bit of money, allowing me to quit and focus 100% on real estate.

The #1 theme I heard over and over on BiggerPockets was this idea of finding a mentor. I had no idea where to find someone to mentor me, so I started telling my friends and family that I wanted to be a full time real estate investor. One day, out of the blue, one of my friends told me about a guy they knew who had been investing in real estate for about 20 years. During my lunch break one day, I went and had lunch with this investor. I tried to get to know his story and investing history. I didn’t want to scare him off by begging him to mentor me. That’s a sure fire way to freak them out! After about 2 hours of talking, it became clear that I needed to learn as much as I could from him. He was a broker licensed in over 20 states, owned an Auction company, co-authored a real estate branding book, and operated a successful general contracting business. Fast forward 4 months and multiple lunches later, I was performing all kinds of tasks for him and soaking up as much of his knowledge and experience as I possibly could! As Shawn Hitchcock says, “A mentor empowers a person to see a possible future, and believe it can be obtained.” I started believing that a perfect career of real estate investing could possibly be in my future.

A year later, at 21 years old, here I am. I just closed on 24 rental houses at the same time (my 1st rental property and my 24th), we’ve flipped 3 homes together, and we’re working on the 4th right now! Although it’s not a perfect career, it’s an exciting one! I won’t go into details of the rentals in this post, but I can say, without BiggerPockets and my mentor/business partner, I wouldn’t be writing this. Looking forward to MANY more deals to come!

Thanks for reading. Have any questions? I’d love to hear from you!

Would love pics and more info! Please pm me.

Thanks everyone. Got some thinking to do. Thanks @William Jenkins for the info. Good to know.

@Andrew Auger Ha! I appreciate the straight forwardness. Maybe I didn't ask this the right way. I do know it's absolutely possible, I guess my question is what kind of product to go for, should I keep all the equity in the deal, should I pull some equity out, etc... 

Hello everyone,

I manage a 10 unit complex here in north Georgia. We just had a commercial appraisal come back at $850,000. We owe $518,000, but it's a balloon with 3 years left. We are trying to figure out how to move it over to a long term fixed. The bank we are with is too small and won't do the refi for us.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!