All Forum Posts by: Kelly Whitley

Again,  Thanks for the warm welcomes and already seeing there's a wealth of knowledge here.

@Andres Jaramillo, Would love to hit the ground running and expand my network.  Where/ when?

I sincerely appreciate the quick responses and insight.  I can tell that there's years of experience pulsing through these pixels!

I live in a decent neighborhood now in a 3200 sq ft house.  Several properties near me are rentals and I thought a good way to get started would be to move my family to another house (it's a little beside the point, but I want to downsize) and using our current house as our first rental property, then using the profits from that property to bankroll the next, etc.

We're 8 years into a 30 year mortgage that we got @ 4%.

The house needs a little fixing up as we have pets and all that that implies.

I'm a 38 year old married man who lives in Spring, TX.  I've been interested in real estate investing for about the past 10 years, but have never really had the gumption to metaphorically jump off the boat to see if I could swim or not.

I don't have much capital, but have excellent credit and almost no debt.

I think the route that I want to take is to buy and rent properties slowly over time, then use that income to pay off those loans, but am not opposed to doing some quick flipping if the diamond in the rough happens to present itself.

I don't have a realtor's license nor do I have any close friends with one (yet).  I'm wondering if this will be a hindrance?  Should I start taking steps to obtain my license?  Also, I'm wondering what others are using to find properties.  Years ago, I read quite a bit about putting up bullet signs and doing short sales, but that honestly didn't appeal to me.  Ideally, like many articles have stated, I want to find a property that needs a little TLC (I could even handle alot of TLC as I'm pretty handy and have good relationships w/ contractors) buy it, and rent it out to good people that need a place to live.

Can anyone tell me a good resource for finding these properties?  IS Har.com all there is for Houston?

Thanks for taking the time to read and I look forward to posting, reading, and sharing with everyone here.