I’ll be separating from the military in a few weeks and I’ve been seriously thinking about getting into wholesaling… My wife and I have had 1 rental property for the past 10 years; we currently let a property manager take care of everything. Having the rental has made me want to get into real estate investing for some time now, but I’ve just not had the time. Now with my separation coming up It seems like a good time to get started. We’ll have enough cash to live with no income for approximately 6-9 months. I’m currently interviewing for government contractor and federal service jobs which will have a great salary but I would very much prefer to do something where I can work for myself and make a comparable or even better income.
From what I’ve gathered from reading the books and forums I think I have the basics down it’s just still a bit intimidating jumping into the unknown…
We’re currently located in the Baltimore area but thinking that we will return to Mid-Tenn area upon my separation in order to extend the amount of time we can survive with no income. It would seem that it would be much better to start in a high population area but the area we will be moving to initially only has a population of around 30,000 ppl as of last July.
Things we’re doing to prepare:
- Wife is taking the TN real estate course to become licensed for the access to MLS and to possibly work out of a RE office
- Building a Buyer list
- Setting up phone numbers
- looking into a website to collect lead info from prospective sellers
- Reading books and forums
- Possibly bandit signs
Concerns:
- Obviously the concern of doing something unfamiliar… but that’s to be expected
- Unsure of what the recorded messages for the leads should say… I’ve actually been unable to find suggestions on this. (I was thinking of directing them to teh website or provide an option to leave their contact info for a return call)
- One of the bigger concerns at the moment is the fact that I have no Idea how to calculate repair costs… (I did read about the square footage x 7-10 dollars method in Sean Terry’s free e-book)
I also had an idea for helping to build my buyer list that I’ve not seen on the forums yet. What I did was look at recent property auctions that have taken place and then look that property address up in the free online public records property data site for the county and see who purchased it then I conducted a search on that owners name to verify that they did in fact own multiple rental properties.
This actually helps in a few ways in my opinion.
- let’s you know the areas where the potential buyer already owns s home
- amount they paid for each home
- features of each property they currently own
- dates of purchase to see how frequently they’ve bought
Any advice / feedback greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance