My first real estate investment purchase was an 8-unit multi-family complex I purchased using equity from my primary residence by way of a cash-out refinance.  After my first purchase, I was super excited and eager to get more.  But before acquiring additional properties, I had to budget for maintenance & improvement projects at the multi-family.  I would be remiss if I didn’t go over some road blocks I ran into and challenges I had along the way. 

I’ve always been interested in real estate. So, investing in single family rental properties has a been a goal of mine for quite some time. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to take the plunge. I’m sure fear was a large factor in not making a purchase. Even though I’ve listened to countless podcasts on real estate investing, read numerous books and attended meetings of local real estate investing groups, I still had this feeling that I didn’t know enough yet. I felt like I needed to learn more about it to avoid making any mistakes. Many would call this analysis paralysis which is over-analyzing a situation to the point that action is never taken. After absorbing all this information about the subject for years it was time to get serious about finding a deal. I had listened to enough of the success stories on the BiggerPockets podcast and I started to wonder why not me? Why wasn’t I a part of this real estate investing frenzy that so many people brag about. I felt like I had a good idea on how to proceed and what to expect when purchasing a property so it’s time for me to go out and build my empire.