All Forum Posts by: Jeffrey Lester

@Damon Armstrong Touché, sir. Touché.

I have not. I'll look into it! To be honest, I have no idea what a lease option is. Time to do some googling :-)

Hello, fellow BiggerPocketers!

I recently graduated high school, and next year I'm attending the university (located about 3 hours from my hometown). I desperately want to get started in real estate, and I thought, why not start in college?

My plan would be to buy either a) a single family home and have a couple of college roommates to pay the mortgage and other fees or b) buy a duplex and have the tenant pay the mortgage and fees.

I'm not cash flow hungry at the moment - I simply would like to have my living costs covered, learn how to landlord, and build equity on my first property. I feel like the experience gained from owning a college would be tremendous and would effectively propel me forward to a successful future in real estate.

There seems to be a big problem, though - how do I get the money to do this? I could have $10,000 saved up a year from now, which would be a 10-20% down payment! but as far as I can tell! I can't get a loan. My income is about $6,000/year since I will be in college, and my credit score will not be well established since I have only had a credit card for a few months.

I do not want to bring family into the equation (i.e. asking my parents to consign). Is there any options available that you guys know of? I would rather not ask friends for money, I simply do not want to get caught up in that method of financing. I'm thinking a loan, most likely. I'm pretty sure I can't get a bank loan, so where do I go?

All input and advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

@Tom V. That's really good advice! I work with a girl whose father flips houses for a living, and I think I may offer a helping hand just to see how it's done. That could be extremely beneficial.

And I am going to try out the excercise you laid out in your comment. I think it's a brilliant learning experience!

Hey, guys! I really appreciate all the responses :-) After thinking about this a lot, I've decided that there's a lot of due diligence to

Do before my first deal - and that's simply educating myself and building a foundation for myself before I jump into this stuff. I have a brother who has always been interested I'm doing real estate, and he almost has his doctorate in economics. I talked to him last night, and he said he would consider trying a flip with my next summer, but that this summer and school year, I should spend time reading, learning, and working with a flipper for free to learn the basics of the type of project.

Again, thank you so much for the responses. I will do as much as I can to educate myself, and hopefully around this time next year, you can all hear about a flipping story from me. :-) I'll have many questions between that time and now, so I'll keep posting to the forums!

You guys rock.

Hello, fellow BiggerPocketers! I've been listening to the podcast for the last couple months and I finally decided to join this awesome community and create my first post.

As the heading suggests, I am graduating high school. I am graduating in 7 days, as a matter of fact. I have been accepted to the University of Montana with some decent scholarship money (yay), and I plan on studying Computer Science.

However, as we all know, college is outrageously expensive. That's why I thought to myself, "I should totally flip a house this summer before I head off to school". I've been working at my local country club as a bag boy during the summer since my freshman year, and, although it is a great summer job, I only make about $3,000 per summer. I would definitely rather use my time trying to flip a house, because I would (a) hopefully make more money than my summer job and (b) it would be excellent experience.

So, I have a list of questions for you investors out there:

1. How should I go about this? Essentially, I have three months until I leave for college. I have about $3,500 saved up, and no one currently willing to say, "hey Jeff, here's $100,000 for that house you've been wanting to buy". I've been reading some of the popular posts on BP about getting started in flipping, but I can't really find any posts that are tailored to young, 18-year-old high schoolers that many people are bound to not take seriously.
2. What would be the best way to find a house? I have ruled out direct marketing. My goal is to buy one house, fix it up, and flip it. I feel like DM would be an expensive time-waster for my current goals.
3. What would be the best way for me to obtain the necessary funding? I could try for a bank loan, but my parents would need to cosign, and (1) they wouldn't even consider doing that for their 18-year-old son and (2) I'd rather keep immediate family out of the equation.
4. I guess this is the most important question... Should I actually try to flip a house? Given my time constraint, age, and standing in life, I'm slightly worried that this may be a horrendous idea for me right now, and if you think it is, I'd like to hear it!

I'm trying to learn about house flipping as rapidly as possible, as I do not feel I have adequate knowledge right now in house flipping to be comfortable carrying out this type of project. So, I'm hoping to give myself 3-4 weeks of learning and researching before I begin the real process of flipping a house. I have made some good connections at my country club over the last few years, and I plan to talk to a person that owns a contracting business here in my hometown and also a very successful apartment complex owner about my idea.

I really appreciate any tips/comments/advice that you are willing to give me. I've got my fingers crossed for a very good summer!

Regards,

Jeff