All Forum Posts by: Ryan Dao

Hey, I was wondering how does one get started bird dogging? Is there a process on how to do it? Is it just looking at vacant/boarded up properties and seeing which look good? Also is it a good way to start off your real estate investing career? 

I know that you might need a licence to officially legally establish yourself as a bird dogger or something like that; I'm not really too sure. In addition, I'm 17, so I'm still a minor, does that affect anything in the process involved? I know that I can't wholesale for that reason. 

@Dave Van Horn

Wow, if I had any doubts about BP, your post just destroyed every last strand of doubt that I had about it. I really appreciate all the advice that you have written and I appreciate all the time that you have put into writing such a detailed response, as I know how long it can take a while to write something as detailed as your post.

Networking is such a valuable skill and I am working on how to expand my horizons, and actually getting involved in the physical world rather than sit on my computer and trying to learn. Of course, you are 100% correct when you say that there are no free rides. In terms of mentoring, I am mostly learning how to wholesale as to provide a means to bring value to the relationships with mentors that I will have. 

At such a young age, there are definitely fears that I have regarding meeting people that will no doubt be older than I am. However, your words have been a reminder to me that these people aren't different than I am; each and every one of them are looking to invest in real estate.

In regards to experience, I know exactly what you mean by that, as knowledge is not the same as experience. I think there was an expression or something that said that you could have all the knowledge about something in the world but if you have never done that thing that you have knowledge of, someone who is less knowledgeable than you but have done it much more times, will always come out better. Or something like that. Anyways I understand what you have to say and I always thought money would be one of the issues until I heard of wholesaling and how that could really kick-start my path towards investing in real estate.

Contrarily to what I just said, however, I'm not actually not too well informed about house hacking but from what I learned so far, you do need a fair amount of money to get started with it (I could be totally wrong though) and I am not entirely certain that $800 would cut it. Although I will look into house hacking whenever I have the money. I never actually heard of P2P lending sites and that seems like a very plausible way to make some money right now. I will continue to check it out and see if its for me.

Thank you for all the wonderful advice that you and many of the other people have given me. In regards with path towards my real estate investing, signing up for BiggerPockets has been one of the best decisions I have made.

@Mateusz Prawdzik

You make a really excellent point about not using my age as an excuse to be inactive, and waiting until this one right moment to invest, because chances are, there's not really a correct time to jump into investing. I can make excuses all I want but they never lead to anything, and that was something that your post reminded me of.

Unquestionably, I will try to make it a habit to not use my age as an excuse to fall back on whenever I can't get something done. I will make it a habit to use it to motivate myself that, its better to start now than later. 

Making the transition from high school to college is definitely something that has been on my mind. I know that college will cost me money down the road, and that is one of the reasons why I'm not looking to invest too much money yet. And that's why I'm trying to get my journey started by wholesaling. I have heard very similar things about wholesaling being very tricky and blowing a lead after spending so much time on it.

Indeed, I will take your warnings about wholesale in my mind. I appreciate your helpful input and I really appreciate it.

@Chris K. 

I actually heard of all of these books except The One Thing and some of these books are on my to-read list. Currently the book I am reading is The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck By Mark Manson and I am not primarily too focused on strictly sticking to real estate, although I do believe that it will be a big part of my future soon enough. That being said, I will definitely see which of your book suggestions will help impact me the most and give them a shot. I am planning on reading The 10X Rule and Sell or Be Sold, both of which written by Grant Cardone.

Anyways, if you do not mind me asking, I had my mind set on majoring in business for a long time and haven't really thought about picking another major such as Computer Science. This knowledge is a big difference to the plan I had in my mind. My plan was to major in business/finance and potentially become a real estate agent to get started with real estate and when I have enough money, I would then invest. May I ask why you suggest majoring in another field other than business when it comes to real estate investing? Is it to ensure that I have a steady basic income to finance the real estate investments?

Thanks for your input and really great book suggestions! You have definitely opened my eyes and gave me something to think of.

@John Knisely Thank you so much for the advice! I live around Southwest Philly (Eastwick) but I do frequently go to Center City a lot to just browse around. I'm not too entirely sure about what college I am planning to go to yet, because there are a lot of choices, but I know that I'm definitely going to major in Business.

I heard of Meetup.com and I actually didn't know that they had networking groups for real estate. For sure, I will check out DIG. I actually never heard of them so that's something new that I learned!

Like you said, I'm not especially too worried about the type of investing that I was planning to do yet, but I will see if house hacking will be good for me to start off my journey. 

I really appreciate all the kind words and support that you have given me and for sure, I will send a message your way if I need any advice with anything. Thank you so much!

@Trexie Eusebio

Thanks! I actually have started reading The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing and its very interesting. It's quite a good read to get me started on my path.

As I said, I'm not entirely too sure about the type of investing I was planning on doing, but I check out the webinar as it seems intriguing. 

Hey! My name is Ryan. This post is a long one so if you don't feel like reading through me talking about myself for 4-5 paragraphs, its probably not in your best interest to continue reading. However, if you are in the mood to read about me basically tell you my life story as well as my hopes and dreams, continue reading! 

I just made an account today, but I've been interested in investing in real estate for a while and I've seen this website here and there but I never knew that there was an elaborate forum and everything; I just thought that it filled with useful articles. I actually have no experience when it comes to selling real estate or buying property other than reading an endless amount of articles about it and living vicariously through the successes of others (as a teen, I should be in the majority in this one though). 

I'm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, however I'm looking to go somewhere else for college - although I don't really have an idea where. But, for now, I'm going to staying in Philadelphia for a while. As you have probably deduced, I'm still a student in high school; I'm a senior, and I'm still trying to survive the tremendous pressure of being a high school student while actively learning about investing in real estate. 

Right now, however, I only have $800 to my name from working with my job, and as much as I want to rent out a $75,000 house, I doubt anyone would loan a random 17-year-old kid with no credit history more money than he ever made in his life. I'm taking baby steps right now, and I'm not looking to rush into real estate. So far, I'm not too certain about how I'm going to invest to real estate yet, whether it be wholesaling, flipping, house hacking etc, and suggestions would help a lot.

Currently, my intention for joining the vicious world of real estate is to be financially independent and not to need to rely on my parents to pay for everything I have. Not to go too much into detail, and to bore you - although if you are still reading my autobiography that I posted here, something about me must be interesting or you're already bored - I'm a first generation American, as my parents immigrated here when I was very young. My parents currently work 70-80 hours a week to make ends meet for me and they are reaching the age of retirement, and I would love for them to actually retire at a reasonable age rather than continue working. Anyhow, emotional backstory aside, I know that as I get more involved into my real estate investing career, my goals will change, but in the present, that is what I hope to seek out from real estate investing.

So what I'm hoping to achieve from these forums is an opportunity to shadow and hopefully do an unpaid internship with a real estate investor as to learn the ropes, in addition to getting familiarized with the process and the mindset of a real estate investor as they carry on with their everyday tasks. I do realize that many people don't want someone with not much experience interning for them but I can definitely bring my hustle and my ambition to the table, as you can or can't tell by me writing a forum post at 3 in the morning that is longer than Shakespeare's plays. I don't want to sound like I'm trying to advertise myself or anything, because that's not my intention, I was opening up about my hopes and dreams, as I mentioned earlier.

All in all, I am having very high expectations about this website. I already learned so much from reading previous forum posts as well as the articles that I stumbled upon. I'm hoping to further increase my knowledge about real estate and crossing my fingers!

Cordially, 

Ryan