All Forum Posts by: Ole Henrik

@Ole Henrik, what is your definition of financial independence?  Are you talking about when can real estate investing become your job and you can leave your W2?  Or when did real estate create so much money that I can completely step away any active pursuit in real estate (flipping/rentals/syndicating deals) and become a full time passive investor in other people's deals?

In the second year of doing flips, my wife and I were making more from flips than salary at the time.  But I wouldn't call that financially independent.  Continuing to work and redeploying the profits allowed us to no longer use outside capital for the flips, and it allowed us to start parking some of that into syndications, 529 accounts for kids, IRAs, etc.  

We are still working on the level that I would call Financial Independence (at least for myself), and would give me certainty that I could truly live of all my investment income in good markets and bad, while more than outpacing inflation, and with enough excess to be able to reinvest a significant amount of earnings every year, to continue to grow the pot.

I started with a duplex (house hack) about 5 years ago.  Shortly after that I decided I wanted to go all in.  Since I didn't have the funds to go big right away, I went into the syndication space. One year after buying that duplex I closed on an 89 unit apartment building through syndication (as a GP).  I continued to build the syndication business for the next two years and was able to leave my W2 at that time to go full time into real estate investing. Ultimately, it took me about 3 years in RE to get to FI.

You start by focusing on that first rental, fix flip, mortgage note, etc that will cash flow and then you reinvest the income received into another property and it compounds over time.  My first property was a rental and bought several over time with bank financing and then started buying property creatively (owner finance, subject to, etc) and now invest in mortgage notes, private lending and syndication investing.  Now I have over 100 income streams.  Read the book The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.