All Forum Posts by: Jason Guenther

 This is the most pragmatic advice.

I really recommend you also learn you can have everything, you can't have everything at once. 

I would work on getting your income up, and saving properly. $30-40k a year is not enough to manage REI, if anyone tells you it is it's either they got something to sell you or they have not faced a cycle or two of financial hardship(economic not necessarily personal). Don't be discouraged, if anything you want to admire the inflection point of the discipline, conviction, and analysis you'll do. Not discredit it. Trust me, it's worthwhile just appreciate the journey.

My recommendation is to get enough income to pursue a 25% downpayment, enough reserves to cover most of capex and vacancy. Then once you're there start looking for deals not looking to make a deal, there's a difference. At $30-40k a year saved up, that means 1 house every 3-4 years. In all honesty, this is better than 97% of America and 99% of the world. So don't discount it at all.

Don't be impulsive, be calculated. This takes time.

As always...

Fast solutions have slow problems!

I would get a low down payment house hack.  Try a fourplex live there for a year and do it again.  Would your current home make a good rental?  If so rent it out, if not sell it and go buy something that is.  I would say there should be a nice upside to selling a house you know and is in a decent location etc.  Make sure to get your house hack first then rent out your other home or sell it.  I don't let myself spend any equity from properties (even when I was scrapping and could have really used it) don't touch that equity! transfer it to the next property or leave it be and keep renting it out.  Hopefully you will have some cash flow to throw at the non real estate debt.  If you are prudent, aggressive and the market remains steady I think you can be a millionaire in 5 years rather easily.  And I would be shocked if you didn't have enough to live a middle class life in 10 years with passive income.  This will open up opportunities that seem completely unrealistic to you now.

Buy real estate in solid locations where the numbers work (probably tight though), manage the real estate for the future, and repeat.  Keep that up and one day you will be a very wealthy man, a very free man.

If you can own 2 million dollars in real estate and the market goes up by 3% you just created 6$0k to your net worth, if it goes up buy 6% you just added $120k.

You need to start thinking a little more thoroughly, and be able to articulate, and test, your assumptions. Example: your $7,000 a month income — is that gross or net? You didn’t say which, so what are we to assume? What quality neighborhoods are you thinking of? Class D neighborhoods pencil out great if you don’t know what you’re doing and don’t mind packing a gun when you go to collect rent every two weeks.

So here’s a tip: never invest in a place where you wouldn’t want to live. Given that you will probably house hack the first few times (3 or 4 years), that tip is literal.


Now comes the most important tip you will ever receive from anyone on BP: Make sure you have 100 percent support from your spouse as to both your overall plan AND the tactics/strategies to fulfill your overall plan. A plan based on property appreciation is very different from one based on cash flow, and is executed differently. Discuss what levels of debt you and your spouse will be comfortable with, as leverage can lose everything, including your home. Is your spouse comfortable with that? Agree on exit plans. What if you aren’t meeting your goals? How long will your spouse allow you to waste money pursuing your dreams? Make sure you know when to throw in the towel without feeling resentment to your life mate. What about life changes? Not to sound too déclassé about it, but broken condoms can equal broken dreams. Have contingencies for your plans. It might take you 25 years (not 10) to replace your (inflation adjusted) current income (gross or net?). Through it all, you have a partner who will be a brick. Whether that brick is something you build with, or is something upside your head, depends entirely on you.

Hey @Jason Guenther - are we long lost cousins?!? 

First off, congrats on being so close to paying off that debt! If you're considering selling your home, moving into a duplex or triplex could be a smart way to lower living costs while building equity and earning rental income. You'll also get hand's on experience being a landlord which is something you'll need to fully understand before scaling. 

If you'd rather stay in your home, tapping into your equity through a HELOC or cash-out refinance could give you the funds for a down payment on an investment property. You could also consider turning your current property into a rental and then moving into a 2-4 unit property while holding tight to your current equity.

Partnering with someone is another option to scale faster—one of you could bring the capital while the other finds and manages the deals. If you are looking to scale you will most likely be looking into partnerships of some form down the road and this is exactly how I was able to scale in the last year. Keep in mind though that finding partners takes A LOT of time as you want to actually build a relationship with said partner before getting any money involved.  

Hard money loans or private lenders can also help you move quickly, but come with higher interest rates that you'd refinance later on. These are typically not something I'd recommend for first time investors, but you should still take some time to learn. 

Another option is seller financing, where you negotiate directly with a motivated seller to carry the note instead of going through a bank. Also look into “subject to” deals, which involve taking over the seller’s existing mortgage. Both options let you buy properties without needing traditional financing. I've been sent multiple creative finance deals in Arkansas from my network over the past few months so I do know they are out there. 

Lot's to unpack here but hopefully this gives you a decent high level pictures of some options you might have.  

You're in a solid spot with your savings—keep going and feel free reach out if you want to dig deeper into any of these routes. Remember that real estate is a get rich slow game!