As you can see by my thread subject, I am brand new to this. I live in a relatively small town about an hour north of Washington DC. I live a somewhat boring life and have held the same job for the last 17 years. I am extremely lucky in the things that I have and the levels of success that I have attained in my career.
The only real, real estate experience I have is purchasing, dealing with the builder since my house was new construction, and owning my home. So I am (in the car business we call it) "as green as green gets" to real estate investing and I am trying so hard to wrap my head around so many concepts and trying to sort through all the things that I feel like I need to remember before I take the jump.
I first got interested in real estate about 20 years ago when my girl friend, now wife, vacationed for the first time in Myrtle Beach. Back in the early 90's condos/beach houses in that area were dirt dirt cheap and all I really wanted was to a small piece of pie and have a place to escape to from all the stress of dealing with/solving other people's problems. Every year, we would go to the beach I would go through my usual routine of getting the real estate magazines from the corner machine and sort through them looking for something that I thought I might be able to buy. Back then, I was really young, I had no money and I had practically no credit so at that time, owning a beach place was really just a pipe dream.
I found BP more by accident than by anything. My wife and I were having a conversation recently, the subject of retirement has come up a lot lately, and I was telling her that outside of our 401K money, I was concerned about not being able to push the pace as hard as I can now at work and it affecting how much money I earn so I was saying that we need another plan. I talk about living at the beach constantly, it's always on my mind. With the job I have, it's kind of my escape on my way home, especially on days where I take an absolute beating so I jumped on the laptop and searched, "what requirements do banks require in order to finance a beach rental property?" and that's when the rabbit hole started. One page led to another which led to another which led me to the BP website and then I discovered Brandon & Josh's podcasts which then led to the forum and here I am.
I have always had a basic goal of owning a beach condo/house and just renting it out when I didn't use it to help pay for it. I never really thought that it would be a anything more than something that I could escape to when the stress was at overflow and to get away for my week vacation once a year. I'm now realizing that I could slow down at work and use multiple beach properties to supplement what I would have earned at work and maybe even eclipse my income so that I could work at whatever pace I wanted to. That's the type of real estate investing I have decided to pursue, I understand there are others and that I should not rule anything out but one thing I have learned in my career is, if you focus on one particular thing, you become and expert at it.
p.s. sorry in advance if my introduction is wordy.
