All Forum Posts by: Katherine Earle

No doubt! My first house is very likely to be a HUD home that I will live in and use a 203k loan for the rehab if the numbers work out. I'm getting my RE license pretty quick here and like Kevin, will probably have relationships with contractors before pulling the trigger when I decide to finally buy my own property as well. It's about getting in the game and making adjustments along the way. When someone worries too much about the details, that's when I have seen plenty of people freeze through analysis paralysis. I might be a newbie regarding real estate, but I certainly have plenty of experience of pulling the trigger where everyone around me would rather suffer being stuck in a life of poverty with no end in sight. No thanks! Red tape?! Bring it on.......

@Christine Lang After we built a 6 figure business, had tons of stuff, tons of debt and found ourselves slaves to the money and miserable.....I read Rich Dad and a few other pivotal books and next thing you know, we found ourselves walking away from our business, filed for bankruptcy, put our family in a homeless shelter and started to rebuild our future with the goal to filter income from a different business into real estate investing and build an investor-friendly brokerage and property management company from the ground up. We just moved 2100 miles away to finally buy that first property after 4 years of prep and I don't think I've been this excited about anything outside of meeting my husband and the births of my children (with baby #5 about to arrive in 3 months!)....!

@Charlie MacPherson Thank you so much for your input! I definitely agree that the commission split is much less important than support that first year or 2. As far as bootstrapping it, I've had the amazing expensive education of building a business to 6 figures and closing the doors a year later because the expenses were too high instead of focusing on the system for growth first. Since I am going into this eyes wide open, I am definitely happy to work for support over commission. Once I can prove to the broker that I won't be one of the Agents giving up within 5 years, we can talk about commission splits.

I have a good impression of some key questions to ask. So what I'm hearing from you that it's mostly dependent on the individual brokerage more than the company association? Does that seem to be accurate?

@Hans Christopher Struzyna Listen to the most recent podcast with Kevin Paffrath. I am familiar with his youTube channel and already knew his story, but he used an FHA/203k for his first deal and it was rough! Lots of red tape, but people have used it to land that first deal and made it work. It just means tons of extra headaches.

@Tristin Sellers What a fantastic time to get started! I wish I did when I was 21 or my 22yo heard anything I said about this kind of stuff.

As far as suggestions.....you can get a secured card pretty easily that you can use and pay off every month to get the ball rolling. Also focus everything you've got on building your income to get an emergency fund while you keep learning. I am working on my RE license that will give me income that I can filter into real estate and keep me plugged into the industry and can add value to partnerships when you dont have much cash to throw into a deal yet.

Most of all, keep pushing through those mistakes and "failures" and you will be just fine. I have experienced homelessness, bankruptcy, business closures and career changes. I promise that as long as you keep getting back up, there isn't much that you can't get through when you fall. Good luck!

For those of you who have your gotten your license, who did you pick to work under and why? Keller Williams, Century 21, smaller local brokerage? I have reached out to a handful recently and plan on interviewing with them to ask about resources and mentoring and commission splits, etc., but I thought I'd reach out to those of you who have personal experiences as you were starting out. My goals are to eventually get into commercial real estate, but starting out in residential as a buyer's agent for a few new investors that I know back in California and we all need to build up our capital and experience before investing in commercial deals.

Thanks Marcus! I really appreciate your candidness. I actually think I'm going to find myself in the Fox Valley for personal preference of smaller towns over the larger urban areas (ready for a nice change after living in San Francisco, Phoenix and NYC all of my life). That being said, it doesn't mean I won't find myself in the Milwaukee area as I dive deeper into the world of Real Estate investing in search for deals!

@Marcus Auerbach Thanks Marcus. That's kind of the impression I was thinking. I drove to one of the historic properties and I was drooling over the potential beauty of this home, but the neighborhood was questionable and there wasn't a garage which was a deal breaker for me. I'm in New Berlin right now which is a bit too rich for my blood at this point, but it got me considering Milwaukee more if I found a better neighborhood that had a bit cheaper homes. Any suggestions you might have for somebody looking at milwaukee for the first time?

As I look for my first property and my partner and I have limited cash, I am thinking the same thing. My thoughts are to talk to local agents and PMs in the area to see about comps, vacancy rates, etc. Now if you find that $30k house that only needs paint and carpet and basic landscaping, you can plug in numbers that might reflect the actual value to see if it really is a decent deal or not. I'm still new myself. So take my thoughts for what they are worth, but we all have to start somewhere. Good luck!