The world is my oyster and I think it’s time for me to get more serious about my real estate investing. There is so much opportunity available to for us to grab out in today’s society and I don’t want to sit on the sidelines.
Currently, I have three single-family houses. Two of them I’m renting out and the other one I live in with one roommate currently, with the likeliness of a second roommate joining us shortly.
People tell me all the time that I’m doing great, especially at 23, and while I agree, I know I can do even more.
There’s lot’s of things I haven’t done in real estate at all. I used a VA loan for all three houses. There’s so many other ways to purchase a house and I need/want to start exploring those options as well.
So after realizing that I know I have so many untapped resources at my disposal, I just need to find them.
When it comes to the type of property I’d like to invest in, I think I’m going to stick to single-family homes. I’d love to get into small-multifamily, but Augusta, GA is not the best market for those with it’s small supply. I know I can do extremely well though with single family homes and then perhaps one day trade up for an apartment complex.
For the last three years I’ve only purchased one house a year, but I’d like to double that starting in 2018. The goal will be to purchase two next year. I’m also going to start working on building up my cash reserves. For cash reserves I keep three months of property expenses like, mortgage payment, insurance, taxes, vacancy and repairs, all in one separate account.
How exactly am I going to make this all happen? I’m not really sure yet. The one way I know and the way I’m going to attempt is to make more money to speed things up by finding a second job that I can work on my weekends. Another route might be to flip a house, but I’m honestly not that interested in flipping. It sounds fun and all, but it’d be so much headache and I really don’t want to do the work. (Just as an FYI, I think I’m a pretty lazy person. I buy real estate and make sacrifices now in order to not work later).
I know I definitely still have access to some loans both conventional and non-conventional. I know I just moved into my current house back in August, but I’m already thinking about where I’d like to move next becasue I could get an FHA loan or a 203k loan or a USDA loan. I have multiple options to keep going with the low and no money down route.
Then I have to account for the fact that I’d eventually like to move to another city at some point after I get out of the military, if I do get out. That’s for another blog post.
All I’m really saying is that I’ve got options. Options that can continue to help me catapult myself to the position of living off of my properties and enjoying my life. Not that I’m not enjoying my life at the moment. I love real estate and it’s exciting to see where I can go with it.
I’d say the big thing for me is decided how far I’d really like to take it all. Do I want to make billionaires and become a big real estate developer like Donald Trump or do I want to stay smaller and have enough properties to live off of and have fun when I want to. Both lives appeal to me. Perhaps I could live both? I’m not sure, just something more for me to consider and write about for you all! I’m sure more thoughts on that will come later.