All Forum Posts by: Jake Chapman

Back when I was in school teachers used to ask everyone "what do you want to do when you grow up". There was a very specific point in time, 8th grade year when we were asked to write a 1 page essay on our future career goals and I got into trouble because my essay was this, verbatim

My parents laughed when they had to come in to speak to the teacher. Still to this day, my initial goal has never changed. I have far to many passions in life from cooking, software development, outdoor activities like overlanding. So the why for financial freedom is because I want the time to do whatever the **** I want, whenever I want, however I want, with whom ever I want to do it with.

Originally posted by @Chris Brown:

Hello Jake,

You pose an excellent question. I like your suggestion of lending as well to get started however, I do believe having experience would be invaluable in understanding the risk in each potential investment. You can come to the right answer for you, by looking at what your goals are in real estate then working backwards. Investing in Real Estate is such a broad concept, you mentioned the BRRR strategy which is more specific but could still encompass several sub strategies. Would you BRRR single family residences, or multifamily? How involved do you want to be in your investments? Would you drive for deals, swing the hammer in renovations, self-manage your investments or take a more hands off approach? The clearer the picture of what you want your real estate endeavors to look like, and in what timeline, the easier it will be to determine what your next steps should be to bring you closer to your goals. I definitely recommend Bigger Pockets Podcast #447 on vivid vision with Cameron Herald it has helped me!

Best Regards,

Chris

Thanks for the recommendation on the podcast, definitely going to go listen to that now. If I was to go the BRRRR route, I feel like I'd start off my a single family residence. From at least what I'm gathering appears to be the most straight forward and won't cost as much as multi-family if I find the right deal. As far as my involvement, I have a knack for creativity being a designer/software engineer by trade. So having an eye for what something potentially could look like is where my secondary passion lives right behind wanting to build equity and some cash-flow coming in, granted may be small to start with. I have a meeting on tuesday with an investor that I was connected with through a close friend who worked with him on the purchase of their house. My girlfriend is a hardcore type-a personality so she'll be dealing with the timelines and making sure everyone who's involved stays the course correctly. So I guess my involvement is bring the right people together, finding the deal, having an eye for whatever rehab needs to be done and being able to invest as much of my own personal money.

Appreciate the reply :)

Originally posted by @Peter M.:

@Jake Chapman If you dont want to be tied down why would you buy a house for yourself? Unless you want to do the live in flips just get a van and go live down by the river and spend your money on rental properties.

I'd also have to become a motivational speaker to live in a van down by the river ;)

Hey biggerpockets community!

I've noticed a trend with everything I've been seeing and reading. People that were living in their house they purchased who loved to process of buying a home and renovating it and continued doing it. It seems like everybody is in the same boat when it comes to owning their own property before diving in to investing in real estate.

I've lived in an apartment (Downtown Seattle) for the past 7 years as I've worked on my personal financial situation. Made some great investments in the crypto world the past few years and negotiated fully remote work for my job so I decided to move out of downtown where there was no way in hell I was going to purchase my own home for the goals I had in mind. I'm now living with my girlfriend in an awesome 3bedroom/2bath house on a lake and we're absolutely loving it for the rent we're paying but don't really want to be specifically tied down to one specific area due to the fact we're both fully remote employees now.

My question is, what is the better of the path (cause there is no 'best' path) to take when starting on a first investment property?
Is it better to have purchased my own place first to get use to the process or does it make sense to stay where I'm at renting a house that we both really enjoy and don't feel the need to own our place yet. My thought process was to start investing with close friends who have purchased properties and lending money to allow them to do renovations and receive monthly paychecks on the loans, or possible find a good off market deal (how ever long it takes me) and purchase it as a rental property in my vicinity as a BRRRR investment to learn the ins and outs before I tackle my own place, and possibly even allow my first house to be larger then I could without the initial equity from the first property.

Anyone been in this spot before? What have you learned from the path you took? Appreciate anyone that responds since I'm just getting into this and wanting to avoid obvious mistakes if I can.