Hello everyone, my name is Scott Lewis and I’m excited to be a new member of the BiggerPockets community! I currently live in Wilmington, DE where I work full-time as a research scientist. My wife and I are in the pursuit of financial independence and believe real estate will help us get there. I am fortunate to have an amazing family and they are my biggest inspiration for securing our financial future.
I'm a real estate investor looking to build passive income through a portfolio of buy-and-hold rentals over the next 7 years. I want to add at least one more small multifamily to my portfolio in the next year. I plan to invest in C or B class properties in B class neighborhoods and focus on:
- Primary: Small multifamily within a 12 hour drive of Wilmington, DE.
- Secondary: SFR. Ideally with forced appreciation, so some form of fixer-upper, pre-foreclosure, or REO that I could BRRRR. These would need to be in or near Wilmington, DE.
I'm still relatively new to the game, owning half of one investment property. I thoroughly enjoy reading about real estate investing and analyzing deals. Over the last several months, I've spent many hours reading BiggerPockets forums and blog posts, listened to 40 or so pre-selected podcasts, and attended a couple webinars. My biggest challenge is analysis paralysis (eg. CapEx estimation for holding properties long-term). look forward to meeting others on BiggerPockets, learning more, and helping others as I gain more experience.
Extended Background
I grew up in Kentucky and went to the University of Kentucky (Go Cats!) in Lexington, KY for my B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering.
Being financially independent played a major role in selecting where I went to school, the cars I've bought (I dislike non-performing assets), my housing decisions, and my savings. I began maxing out my tax-advantaged retirement contributions in 2007 while in grad school and have taken advantage of every tax-advantaged retirement account I can since then. In 2008, while still in school, I also did what could be considered a "house hack" when I bought a foreclosed townhouse, financed through a conventional mortgage and a family loan, and rented out 3 of the 4 bedrooms to some friends. I actually just sold the townhouse recently, after some family members were finished living in it. Unfortunately, they trashed the place, which had quite a negative impact on the ROI, but the good times I had there and lessons I learned from it were worth it.
I moved to Delaware in 2011 and rented for a couple years. My wife and I bought a house in Wilmington in 2013. Our realtor discussed some real estate investment opportunities and helped us find a short sale we were able to go in on with a partner in June 2015 to flip and make a small profit. Going into it, I was mainly looking to gain experience and work with a mentor, so my wife and I were delighted to make a profit. We then took the proceeds and went in on a deal our realtor helped us find with another partner on a 9 unit apartment building in downtown Wilmington in 2016. It’s been a learning experience, too, and has been a little bit of a rough start. After purchase, about half of the tenants said they were on the way out, but the property management company did a good job getting more tenants in.
My wife and I have two children, born less than one month ago. We both enjoy our jobs, but we want to have financial independence since some things are outside of our control and we want to be able to spend as much time with our children as possible.
