LONG POST, hope you're ready :)
My husband and I have been researching, educating, and networking in the REI world for the last 8 months. We haven't purchased our first property yet for two reasons: Lack of capital, and lack of bank loan qualifications.
Where we are at currently:
Just moved to Maryland to start new jobs that will be bringing in larger amounts of income than we've ever had before. We live for free with the most minimal bills and expenses two people could possibly have.
What our strategy is:
Purchase low priced(<100K) multi-families with high cash flow(>$400) to get ourselves to $2000 in passive income in our first year. We want to scale quickly and build a diverse portfolio of small multi-families and commercial RE. Our end goal is to reach $10k in monthly passive income in 6 years (hopefully sooner if we can find home run deals, find good partners, and not waste time or money on bad deals).
What action we've been taking in the last two weeks since moving to Maryland:
We've been doing the usual of finding and analyzing deals, mostly in NY state which we thought was our desired market based on numbers. We found one deal, a 6 unit in Utica, which we contacted the owner, worked out seller financing terms and thought we were going to get a 35K personal loan to purchase it. During our due diligence we discovered the property was only zoned as a 3 unit, which freaked out us about trying to refinance with the bank to get better terms down the line. We thought we locked in the loan, ended up finding another deal which was a triplex for 35K in far northern NY, spoke to the listing agent, put in an offer and thought we had finally found our first deal! Within two days, we realized the lender who was going to loan us the 35k was a scam and then never heard back from the listing agent about our offer. She completely ghosted us and when we called to inquire, she just said the owner wanted nothing to do with our full cash offer because we wanted to get a home inspection done.
Lastly:
We are thinking NY might not be the best state to start our REI journey. Although the numbers on the deals look good, the whole covid/eviction problem there is a bit worrisome. Now we're going back to the Ohio market, which we've looked into at the start of our interest in investing. Overall, we feel like we are kind of back to the drawing board, but have learned a lot during the last week.
If you've read all of that and are still willing to respond, I thank you big time!
