@Anton Ivanov
Congratulations! Your story is certainly inspiring! I found myself in a similar situation like you were back in 2014-2015. I'm 30, also went from a less than $40K call center job in 2014 to a data scientist position currently, tripling my salary, meanwhile my wife has a job contributing good W2 income. We also try to keep 5-6 months reserve in all units, all traditional, fixed rate financing with W2 income. I love your story, and felt a connected when you mentioned you went from a technician to SE.
But we have kid, so saving money is a little hard (compare to before), but finding time to do business is the hardest part, my last deal was done on the day when my son was born 18 months ago, and I haven't done a deal since. I recently got back to the market and started looking again.
We had bad experience with property management companies - not many companies to choose from to begin with, we used one that checked all checklist with glorious reviews, but still didn't work out, so I want to pick up your brain on that - do you always tryout a few property managers to start with? I know you mentioned in previous post about having a checklist on PMs and networking are the keys. I'd like to hear specific stories how you found yours if you don't mind sharing.
I've been avoiding property managers, so I invest locally and manage personally. With a full time W2 job and limited time, I've been focusing on higher end SFR, dealing with better quality tenants, and fewer tenants (as compared to multi-family).
Also, I want to pick your brain about just personal finance - why 50 units? I know you mentioned $180K as a goal - but I'd think with your 70% saving rule, you would be financially free with only 35 units that you currently have (or even 25-30 units). Is there a deeper reason for your number 50?
Our family can't save 70%, but we currently save about 50% of take home pay (Cleveland is a cheap place to live). We have enough doors to quit our W2 job to make budget work comfortably, but not half enough doors to replace our salaries and benefits (pension, healthcare coverage, stock options, cash bonus and tuition reimbursement etc.). Due to our conservative nature, we kept going back and forth on the right timing to quit, and right number of doors needed. I certainly don't want to quit one W2 job just so I can over-work myself in another real estate job, and if there is another 2008-2009 coming, I want to keep my W2 job to finance more properties. Also, I'm in the same boat, I don't want to retire, if it was up to me, I'd like to start a company working on some big data analysis on housing markets and doing some predictive analysis, projecting how a REI deal can look in the future etc. I see you already started your own company utilizing your software engineering skill, thoughts about timing to leave your W2 job?
