Good Morning Paul,
Welcome to our club and thank you for posting on the forum.
There are several real estate investment clubs in your area.
A friend of mine, Ian Day, runs a large one not far from you (TxREIC - http://www.meetup.com/Texasrealestateinvestorscircle-com/).
There is also the Dallas REIA club - http://reiadallas.com
(nice people, but probably want to use a secondary email when you register with
them as they communicate A LOT), and Roger runs a nice club at http://www.meetup.com/ntarei/. These
should help get you started.
I strongly suggest you hold off on leveraging your primary
residence’s equity until you (AND your wife) are significantly more educated
and accustomed to real estate investing and the inherent risks and rewards
associated with it. This should not take more than 6 months or cost more than
$1,000 to $2,000, total.
After having been a full-time investor for over 11 years, I
suggest all new investors learn the basics:
- calculating comps (determining a
home’s value),
- marketing to buy and sell properties,
- home inspection basics,
- negotiation and using the TREC 1-4 residential real estate purchase agreement,
- multiple strategies for funding your deals,
- credit - where to get it and how to use it in the REI business,
- wholesaling,
- rehabbing,
- buy-n-hold,
- buying using wrap notes,
subject to, and options (don’t do these last three until you’ve bought 5-10
properties, just learn about them).
Once you have educated yourself on these basic REI concepts you can confidently begin buying and selling real estate. Most of this information is available online, or at your
local used bookstore.
While Robin and I love to see you (and all other real estate professionals) at our weekly meetings, we
understand not everyone is able to attend each meeting in person.
That’s why we created our online training library. We have 150+/- meeting
videos/audios available, covering all the topics above (and MANY others). We add
roughly 35-45 new recordings to the library each year. To learn more about
accessing this training check out our Gold Membership (http://www.dfwreiclub.com => Membership
=> Gold Membership).
You can also find a great deal of free data at online real estate
investment forums (i.e. BiggerPockets.com). If you are going to lurk on those
forums, please understand that some of the posts are very informative.
Unfortunately, there is no barrier to entry so many of the posts are not.
Finally, I would suggest you hold off on buying much of
anything (especially Mentoring services or expensive “guru” courses) until you
learn some basics, determine the lay of the landscape, and decide who the
players are you want to trust with your time and money. The mentoring and courses will ALWAYS be available for purchase, they folks who sell those goods and services are never going to run out, and, after about 10,000 years or so, it appears houses are here to stay. You have plenty of time to educate yourself and make wise, frugal decisions.
If there is anything else I can do to help you grow your
business, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Best regards!
-Greg
Greg Wilson
The REI Mentor
http://www.reimentor.com
