I’ve moved a decent amount in the last few years and have never been able to buy before now. I’ll be settling down in the Midwest and want to know what the best REI strategy to pursue would be? Have capital, good credit, but limited time and limited RE experience.
Options I’m tossing around…
-rent something reasonably nice/small for the wife and I to live in and invest in a smaller apartment building or commercial property
-go owner occupied on a cheap 4 unit place
(not sure wife will like slumming it-or that I would like the lack of investment/personal life boundaries)
-buy a 200k house to live in and invest in a smaller 4 unit-ish sized place
-buy a giant 400k house and just fund the IRA and don’t bother with REI. I’ll prob work 50-60 hours/week at the JOB with a very stable firm and I expect I have some super solid upside options there.
My parents had 2-3 rentals when I was growing up, I worked for a property manager before while in undergrad, ran a successful painting contracting business, am solid at negotiating and selling, have spent my share of time in rough neighborhoods, but I’m concerned I may be too much of a nice guy to ever get too good at evicting poor people. Maybe commercial would be better for me? I don’t mind getting tough with other businesspeople.
Anyways I’d love to hear any thoughts as to what type of REI investing might fit best with my lifestyle, time constraints, experience and financial situation.
I'd start out buying a single family house you can easily afford. Then you you should absorb all you can about REI and find an area that you might like. You need to have specific short & long term goals and a plan to achieve them. You need to learn how to develop a specific criteria and how to evaluate good deals. Through education and networking with other successful investors, you'll be able to start of on the right foot. I suggest reading " The Millionare Real Estate Investor" by Gary Keller and " The ABC's of Real Estate Investing" by Ken McElroy. There are many other good books that are pretty cheap. I just bought Carlton Sheet's course on ebay for $40. It's a pretty decent basic course. Invest the time to gain an understanding of REI. Then invest your money. You've got some good things in your favor with good credit and money to spend. Good luck. :beer
You’re situation is similar to mine when I started out except my job was flex hours so I could do things during the day which helps a lot.
I started by building knowledge by reading books and listening to courses I got dirt cheap off of ebay. My original plan was to buy rentals, my first property ended up to be my house. As I gained knowledge, I realized I did not want to be in the rental business and moved quickly to sub2/owner financing. Now, I am leaning more towards rehabs but sub2/owner financing is still my main strategy.
As far as how to do it with a day job, with your income, it should be fine. When you are ready, you hire an answering service with a script to get your calls and you call them back during lunch, break, or after 5pm. Most sellers want to be contacted in the evening anyway.
With limited time, you may want to stick with very light rehab, unless you think you can manage contractors and hire general contractor.