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All Forum Posts by: Nastassja S.

Nastassja S. has started 3 posts and replied 15 times.

Post: Would it be rude, naive, or too hopeful to ask for a mentor on BP?

Nastassja S.Posted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Posts 15
  • Votes 3

I believe birddogging is my only option given my situation (I have a large school debt and no job I can get will be adequate enough to pay my debt, survive, AND save for investment). I've quit my $10/hr night job to become an investor/wholesaler full-time (because even making 3 deals a month would be making me more money than I could make with my last employer), but I am not sure how to actually present information (or narrow down buyer criteria) as a birddog. All the buyers I've contacted thus far give me vague information about what they want - so instead of working on and looking for good, workable properties, I'm left with providing a bunch of Maybe's and still not sure how to present it to my buyers.

This is where I've come to ask if it would be totally naive or rude to ask for a mentor (who'd like to invest in/around Pittsburgh, PA) who could guide me, at the least temporarily, on how they would like properties submitted to them and what they consider a "good find". Naturally I would offer my first 5-10 successful deals free of any charge (or at the minimum a dollar). Would I/could I expect to be taken advantage of?

I've had a few classes, and read a few books. I'm not completely clueless about REI and the many, many branches of investing within it. I suppose its the details that I lack.

Am I stepping out of line asking for this sort of apprenticeship?

Post: A knowledge-thirsty, newbie wholesaler from Pittsburgh, PA

Nastassja S.Posted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Posts 15
  • Votes 3

You are all so welcoming and I'm truely grateful.

I will definitely bookmark and read all the links provided. Thank you for steering me in the right direction. There's so much information on this site I was concerned where to start. 
Looking forward to speaking more with you all. Thanks again!

Post: A knowledge-thirsty, newbie wholesaler from Pittsburgh, PA

Nastassja S.Posted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Posts 15
  • Votes 3

@Jen Kurtz 

Thank you for the encouragement, Jen! I do love all that is Pittsburgh. There's so much potential here. And you just gave me an idea to start a personal blog narrating my efforts along the way somewhere on my profile page if it allows that at all (and if I can make time for that). Maybe in a few months I can look back and appreciate how far I got. 

Post: A knowledge-thirsty, newbie wholesaler from Pittsburgh, PA

Nastassja S.Posted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Posts 15
  • Votes 3
Originally posted by @Elizabeth Colegrove:

buy and hold investing, 0% Down Rentals, Personal Properties turned rentals, Long distancing investing, self-managing 3,000+ miles away. 

All these sound like business concepts I would love to use much sooner than later! I will have to look up more info on these. Your blog would be a fantastic start for me. Thank you for your help!

Post: A knowledge-thirsty, newbie wholesaler from Pittsburgh, PA

Nastassja S.Posted
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Posts 15
  • Votes 3

Hello BP!

My name is Nastassja and I'm a newbie wholesaler-wannabe dwelling within Pittsburgh, PA. The first thing I want to say is that I'm so thankful this community exists. Honestly.

Let me start with my background. Following my parents advice, I went to college...over and over again. I ended up wracking up debts for a degree that would never pay it off. It was stupid - but that was all I knew about how the world worked. You go to college. Get a 9-5 job. You live meagerly paying off debts for 10 years. Then you're able start working towards your retirement. I didn't know anything else back then. $80k later, I've got a degree in culinary. The average rate of pay for food service is $10-14/hr. It wasn't even close to worth it. 

Up until a week ago, I had been planning on how I could get myself out of this mess. I looked up difference positions, higher salaries, the college degrees I would need to obtain those salaries -- and all of a sudden, my mother invited me to a seminar -- a Yancey: Boots on the Ground seminar. I didn't know what this was at the time - she only told me it was a 3-day intensive real estate seminar. She tried to explain that she found a way to help me pay off my debts so I can actually have a financial future. She gave me no names, so I could not look it up (and I did badger her to tell me). It was in those classes that I had found out she had paid $30k to take them and I could not tell you how angry I was when I heard this. 

ANYWAY, regardless of her decision to spend money she didn't have and will now owe, and the questionableness of the price-to-information ratio the seminar held, the seminar actually did provide quite a lot of information I had never known about REI before, and the potential returns did interest me quite a bit. So much so that I happily quit my meager $10/hr job to try this career out. My mother and I started a team including one other person, but if I can close even ONE $500 deal in a month, I would have made my ENTIRE paycheck. But I have much bigger goals than just that...

Although I own no properties, and I don't have any sort of background in real estate investing, I am a non-stop learner. And as long as there is information on the internet, and educated/experienced mentors willing to share their knowledge and experiences, I know I can succeed in this. That expensive seminar still let me with way too many questions that they refused to answer, and even though there is a "mentor-hotline", they often leave me feeling like they are just trying to sell me something... 

So that's what brings me here to the great people of BP. I look forward to learning every detail there is to wholesaling from those of you who have dabbled and mastered it, and gradually reaching a point to flip or hold.

Till next time!