All Forum Posts by: Josh Mac

@Josh Mac

My wife and I started with a 1br condo in downtown Denver. It was our primary residence. 

Our second purchase (first actual pure investment) was a studio condo in the same area and operated as a furnished medium-term rental. When we moved to a 3br condo, we turned our 1br condo into a midterm rental as well. And when we moved from our 3br condo to a SFH in Colorado Springs, we turned the 3br condo into an MTR as well.

In between, we also partnered to buy a duplex in Colorado Springs and just recently a vacation rental/STR in Mexico, but this was years after that first one.

Hi Josh! After spending a long time in the "education process" of binging BP youtube videos, reading books and doing searches throughout this forum, I decided to take action and purchase my first property utilizing the VA Loan given my military status. After several years at that property the Army decided to move us to a new location and we purchased our second home with the remaining entitlement on the VA loan.

With our VA "safety rails" removed, I read through David Greene's books Long-Distance Real Estate investing and purchased a multifamily property in Illinois. We took a tactical pause, built up the warchest with cash flow from these three properties, did some additional rehab to further tenant-proof our properties, and continued scaling from there!

@Josh Mac

My wife and I started with a 1br condo in downtown Denver. It was our primary residence. 

Our second purchase (first actual pure investment) was a studio condo in the same area and operated as a furnished medium-term rental. When we moved to a 3br condo, we turned our 1br condo into a midterm rental as well. And when we moved from our 3br condo to a SFH in Colorado Springs, we turned the 3br condo into an MTR as well.

In between, we also partnered to buy a duplex in Colorado Springs and just recently a vacation rental/STR in Mexico, but this was years after that first one.

I started with Virtual Assistant and gained knowledge about different categories of Real estate and now I am running my own Real estate VA services team.

I started in 2008 in Milwaukee and bought a duplex for $126,000 and $550 rent. My agent was a super-nice lady, maybe 75 years old and no idea about investing. I was terrified at closing that this would be a huge mistake!

I had no plan, just fixed what was broken and rented it out on craigslist. Could not believe when I actually received rent in the mail.. it worked! Real estate was scary at the time, the news were bad, prices were dropping and nobody knew if that would ever get better.

I had a well paying corporate job at the time (which also meant international travel 2 weeks every m month), so I did not have much time and it also it took me a year to find the confidence and the money for another one. I bought what I could, financed what I could without getting overleveraged, raised private money, did a lot of BRRRR's, some lease options, some flips, built new construction, also got divorced, which wiped me out, but I found a way to keep going. Started building a team around 2014, retired from my W2 in 2015 and got licensed as an agent on a team. 5 years ago I started my own team and we are now top 1% in Milwaukee, I also host a YouTube channel about Milwaukee real estate and I am on the board or the rental property association of Wisconsin, responsible for marketing.

Looking back it was messy and chaotic, lot's of nights and weekends. I always hired contractors, and did material runs for them several times a week after work and cleaned up jobs on the weekend, which was also time I spent at the properties, discovering issues, thinking about the rehabs and what needed to be done next. I don't know how anyone can do a full rehab out of State. 

What was important I never took a dollar of cash flow or equity out of the business. To this day we reinvest everything and either upgrade properties or buy more.

Pretty unique situation here: Purchased my first home because my roommate was tired of renting. We were college roommates and life long friends. We bought our first home together (eek), but it turned out great. The day after closing on the home I quit my job and got into mortgages (my lender was also a friend from high school and made the process so incredibly simple). Was blessed my past skillset allowed me to do great. My buddy who I bought the home with got engaged, I bought him out of the property via refinance. Took out a HELOC a couple months after and was able to save the entire time (both because we split rent, as well as the commission I saved up).

House hacked and purchased a few other properties with the mindset of always taking out a HELOC 6 months before I planned on moving.

Capital is the way to move ahead in this world. You don't have to skip the daily Starbucks to do it, you need to focus on how will you save large (3.5-20% depending on route you go) sums of money. 

I started with a subject to flip.  I found the property on craigslist so that should give you an indication of how long ago that was .. 2006 - about the age of my profile picture : hahahaha

At the time I had a total of $15,000 cash. We took the house over, finished renovations & turned that into $25,000. Next house was a probate that took 6 months to close : used bank financing and turned that $25,000 to $43,000 ... next we flipped a short sale. Turned that $43,000 into $110,000 : took us about year & a half ... after that we began scaling. Now we flip 20-25 houses per year : I don't want to do anymore than that. We use some of our own cash, a ton of private money, some bank financing, HELOC & direct lenders like Kiavi, RCN Capital. We use our cash for buy & holds & have a portfolio of 32 doors : a few multi family, one corporate rental, 2 short term rentals & the rest are SFH's

House hacking in the greater Boston area. Got one and that lead to another. Now I’m deciding what direction I want to go next. 

I started with house hacking in NJ. My location strategy was being close to train transportation to capitalize on the large commuter base traveling into NYC. Also, I reviewed Google News to find new development projects since I sought appreciation over cash flow. 

This led me to a town called South Amboy in NJ. They had received funds to build a new ferry port for commuters, a new luxury apartment building, and redevelopment project for the waterfront area. After a year I rented out the property and have since used a HELOC to invest in other rentals.

You can check out my episode on the Bigger Pockets Rookie Podcast - EP 349 for more info

I started with house hacking a fixer condo. Fixed it up, rented another room, refinanced a few times to lower the payments. Then I took out a HELOC to buy the second house hack and did an FHA 203(k) loan to remodel and expand the main house and convert the garage into an ADU. Lived in the ADU until we got our finances in order and then moved into the main house. Then sold the condo and did a HELOC on my new house hacked and did a BRRR out of state, where I made an extra $60K on top of money actually out of my pocket and bought another property with a 50/50 split with a business partner.

You will have to be careful with some stories because times were very different over the last decade. When I bought my condo in 2015, it was towards the bottom of the market for condos. Then when I sold in 2022, it was before rates really took a jump. 

If I were to start over, I would have had to do it differently because I wouldn't have been able to bank on the appreciation like I did before.