All Forum Posts by: Kerry Mertz

The unlimited use of the BP calculators alone make it worth it. Plus, I figure it's the least I can do considering all of the free education I've received through the website and podcast. 

Congratulations @Adam Sheren! Very inspiring! 

@Jerryll Noorden Congratulations! The after pictures look beautiful! Just curious, are you doing deals in Fairfield County?

Aside from networking, you should try to narrow down your search criteria and goals. Will you flip? Buy and hold? BRRRR? House hack? SF, MF or commercial? Decide what neighborhoods and price range you want to be in. Once you narrow down your criteria, you can be more productive in how you spend your time.

Instead of focusing on the "why not," try focusing on the "why." Yes, there are a lot of obstacles in real estate investing and it takes hard work and persistence. However, the benefits far outweigh the risks. Maybe you should make a list of pros and cons and see how it stacks up.

You might want to look into turn key companies once you choose your market. I think that's an easy way to introduce yourself to out of state investing. There's a lot of hand holding and a lot of turn key providers also do property management. Once you get more comfortable, it's easier to branch out on your own.

Update:

Some time has passed and I wanted to share my decision. It may not be the right decision for everyone, but I felt that it was the right decision for me and my family at this point in our lives.

Well first, I should explain where I am in life and what my strategy is so you understand where I'm coming from. I'm 35 years old with a 1 year old son. My husband and I both work W2 jobs that we don't love, but don't hate either. Our goal is to reach financial freedom before the age of 40 so we can retire and enjoy the rest of our lives. There may or may not be a second child that comes into the picture. We are buy and hold investors with 2 SF properties under our belt. Going forward, we plan to use the BRRRR strategy to aggressively expand our portfolio into multifamily and commercial investing.

So that brings me to my decision- I decided to withdraw the money from my SDIRA, pay the 10% penalty, and use it to add more properties to my portfolio. I understand that I am losing out on the tax benefits of the Roth IRA. At this point, I think having access to every dollar we can get our hands on will only increase our chances of reaching financial freedom sooner. I don't want to wait 25 years before I can access that money when it can have a much greater impact for us now. If all goes according to plan, we won't even need any extra money in 25 years because we will own a paid off portfolio of properties and we'll probably have more money than we've ever dreamed of.

I'm not saying the other options weren't good ones. They just weren't right for me at this point in my life.

After all, life is short and 25 years is a long ways away.

Hi Chris, 

Before I stumbled upon BP, I thought that getting my real estate license would be the best way to get into real estate investing. It was a fairly easy and quick process to get the license (a few months). One thing you should consider is that you have to pay a lot to maintain your license and memberships as a realtor (I'm not sure what it costs in your area, but here in CT it would cost me close to $1000/year to maintain an active license.) In the end, it never helped me because I don't invest locally.

My advice would be this: 

1) Continue educating yourself on all things real estate using the BP podcast and forums. You will learn way more here then in any real estate licensing course.

2) Once you go to NC, then reconsider the real estate license if you plan to invest locally. I do see value in that since you won't have to set up showings with another realtor and you'll have access to the MLS.

Either way, I don't think having a real estate license will be necessary, but it might make things more convenient if you invest locally.

@Jerry W. it’s my husband and I.

What type of real estate investing are you interested in? Maybe go to a local REI meeting and find someone who does what you want to do and see if they need an assistant. If you have experience finding deals, maybe try to find a partner who has experience to invest with you and you can learn as you go instead of trying to find an internship.