All Forum Posts by: Bryce Jamison

I don't see people have much luck asking for someone to mentor them in the forums. It's a big ask of someone to take time from their life and investing journey to teach a stranger the skills they acquired, granted you are willing to compensate someone.

I recommend a more organic approach of meeting other local investors, genuinely taking an interest in what they're doing, and genuinely trying to help them succeed. If you do that people will naturally flock to you wanting to help / mentor you.

Educate yourself through books, podcast, these forums, and meeting folks at local meetups and you may find out that you didn't really need a mentor, but rather knowledge.

If you're scared to take the leap to get your first property, I'd advise making your first deal as low risk as possible. 

To me this means a 2-3 bd single family home in a high B / A area and saving a big emergency fund. Risks become less worrisome the bigger your emergency fund. You can easily self manage 1 property with Zillow and Excel. You certainly can have more robust systems, and probably should as you scale, but if you're looking for easy mode don't stress about it. Your realtor will do a lot of the acquisition hand holding you're looking for and BP and your local network can help with any concerns you have getting folks into the property and managing it, or you can hire a property manager to do it, albeit at 10-15% of gross and they won't do as good a job as you will. If it's the worst deal ever and you ruin everything, sell it and maybe you're out 5-20K. That's not a trivial amount of money, but it won't leave you on the streets when you're retirement age.

You got this! I feel confident after you do your first deal you'll be kicking yourself for not doing it sooner.

I don't understand what you're trying to do. In my experience, wholesalers ask what type of properties folks are looking for, then they go out and find and get them under contract. They then send out what properties they have under contract to their list of buyers hoping to make a spread on the deal. Doing this requires both a healthy inventory of deals way under market value and a large list of serious buyers. I don't understand why I'd need to be in partnership to buy properties from someone.

I love this question, your mentality, and strategy. Besides reading books, check out all the podcast too, specifically David Greene's.

My first thought is start going to all of your local REI meetups. Take a sincere interest in what others are doing and trying to help them and they'll naturally be drawn to you and want to help you.

But how can a "newbie" help other seasoned investors? Learn about "driving for dollars" to create your own curated deal list. You can use tools like the BP deal calculators to then share these with the investors you meet at the meetups. Maybe you can help the investors you meet with all the miscellaneous tasks involved with investing like picking up rent checks, turning over properties for new tenants, or even just driving by occasionally to make sure their properties are in good condition.

I'd also recommend spending a lot of time looking at all the homes you're targeting in your area, both online and in person. If you do this for 3-6 months, you'll know a good deal right away which will help you when you're ready to buy.

I us Zillow to see what what people are asking for various types of properties in a given area. You can see how many contacts and applications they've had. If there's a lot, they're probably under priced, and conversely, if there's not a lot, it's probably over priced. You can see big differences between similar houses based on location, even within the same city, and quality or the property. 

I'll then list my properties on the high end of whatever I think fair market rent is. If I'm not getting many inquiries I reduce price aggressively. I'd rather rent for $50-$100 less a month right away than wait a month or 2 to get the higher rate.

1) Never heard of him, and I like to think I'm pretty plugged into the REI / finance world.

2) Everything you need to know is available for free on podcast, YouTube, books at your library, the BP forums, and local REI meetups.

3) I can think of 2 ways to invest with none of your own money. You can be good enough at REI that people will give you their money to invest with them giving you a cut of the profits, or wholesaling where you find a buyer to assume your contract before closing. When you're new with no experience, It will be extremely hard to find anyone that will go into business with you if you have no skin in the game, and you don't know enough buyers and sellers to be an efficient wholesaler.

There's no "secret" or cheat code to wealth accumulation. Make and save as much money as you can, spend as little as you can / avoid consumer debt, and invest in the highest yielding investments you can. If you do this for enough years in a row you should be financially secure and everyone will be jealous how lucky you are! Being humble, having a positive attitude, meeting people, and constantly learning new things will make the process even faster.

Can you be more specific? What are you researching and what information do you want?

If I'm trying to determine market value of a property I'll use Zillow to see what similar properties in the area have been selling for the last 3-6 months. 

If I'm trying to determine how much to rent an LTR for I'll also use Zillow to see what others are asking for similar homes and how many people have reached out & applied.

If I'm trying to determine how much to rent an STR for I'll use the enemy method, AirDNA, and estimates from property management companies.

House hacking is a great way to get started. That's what I did.

My primary residence is in Mebane and I have an LTR in Graham. I also like Whitsett. 

There's a monthly REI meetup in Burlington I try to make when I can. If you'd like more info on it send me a message.

If everything is good with acquisition I'd focus on your systems. Do you have a rental agreement template already? Have you scheduled a cleaner to come in and do a deep clean before you start renting. How are you going to market this property and who's taking the pictures? Do you have a system to vet tenants and a criteria they need to meet? Did you already get insurance and does it cover tenants?

For house hacking your first house these things don't need to be overly complex, but you do need to think about them.

If you literally feel like your twiddling your thumbs you can come up with contingencies for when bad things happen like not paying rent, not getting along, not keeping house clean, partying too much, etc. You can then share with tenants upfront what you'll do in each of these scenarios so there's no surprises. You can also start reading tons of real estate investing books and listening to podcast. You can also put in more time / effort in your W2 job to try in bring in more money for more properties.

Good luck and don't forget to keep your emergency fund beefy!
 

If you're just starting out and have limited funds house hacking is a great place to start.

Simultaneously, work your tail off to get your W2 income up. 

A lot of the popular, no money needed, strategies like being a wholesaler, getting a partner to fund the deal, or STR co-hosting / arbitrage are a bit of a paradox because the people that have the expertise to effectively implement these strategies are typically the experienced folks that don't need no money down strategies to invest.