My husband and I are just starting out on our Real Estate Investing Journey. Like everyone else’s, it started with Rich Dad Poor Dad (my husband would correct me and say it started with a Simple Path to Wealth and I would counter that that’s where our 529s and 401k journey started, not the real estate one).
We read RDPD and others by it’s author, attending a seminar, and played Cash Flow. We were ready to start thinking about Real Estate differently, if only we could find this specialized knowledge praised in Kiwasaki’s works.
Now, information is everywhere and as we started googling and discussing REI, the targeted ads came en masse (thanks a lot Siri). We listened to Podcasts (I was a big fan of the first season of Without Fear of Her Future and my husband would pick random Bigger Pockets episodes). We began to have an inkling of specialized knowledge but still hadn’t bought a rental property. One thing I noticed in our research was that everyone was very successful and everyone said we would have setbacks. I decided we would start this blog at the beginning, before we even bought the first property (though when we were far enough down the road to know that was the direction we were heading, as I will discuss shortly). That way, everyone will get to share in/read about are successes and our failures and hopefully learn some things along with us.
But before I get too far down the line, let me tell you who we are.
My name is Kara. I was born and raised in San Diego. Like all 18 years olds, I was ready for some freedom and went across the country for college to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where I was lucky enough to row on the Schuylkill all 4 years. I then returned to sunny SoCal for law school at UCLA. After graduating and passing the bar, I knew I had no interest in being a lawyer and instead entered public service. I have had a real estate hobby for years (HGTV, Redfin and open houses galore) and have recently been trying to expand that interest.
At a run club at Milestone Running, I met a man named Ken who, several weeks later, asked for my number and, a quick two weeks after that, texted to maybe (this is a subject of constant debate) ask me out on a date. 4 years later we were married and 5 years after that we have two young kids who like to keep us busy. Ken will have a voice in these blogs and reign in my rambling I am sure, but he is currently snoring next to me.
Ken was a physics major at UCSB and is now a self taught programmer working in big tech. I’ll let him talk more about himself though.
So why are we investing now? After 10 years in the public sector, I qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness which puts us in a really good position to move forward. Ken’s job also comes with some stock rewards which has allowed us to save some capital to start investing. Add in the two little ones who need a bit more attention than two 40 hour work weeks allow and you get two parents looking for less traditional ways to fund their relatively simple lifestyle (and maybe private school, if all goes well).
After a lot of debate and research (primarily in podcast form), we have decided to start with a turnkey, buy and hold single family home property. Already I’ve started with the fancy terms. Turnkey means little to no maintenance at the time of purchase. A buy and hold is a property that one buys and holds onto (as opposed to a flip where you buy it and sell it quickly after for a profit). Ok, so maybe the terms weren’t that fancy but I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.
Turnkey buy and holds are fairly low risk. Down the line, I would like to channel my inner Joanna Gaines and try my hand at a flip. I also eventually want to have some short term rentals. However, we expect to learn a lot with our first property and want to make sure we only bite off a manageable amount. To that end, we have also decided to go with turnkey provider service Rent to Retirement.
Rent to Retirement has an academy that comes with perks and advice from other investors. At the time we bought in, it cost $3000, an amount that will be credited to any house we buy through their service within 6 months. Since we had already decided to use their service, we figured the Academy was a no brainer (shameless plug: if you want to sign up, let me know. We get a kickback for referrals).
At the moment, we are two weeks into the 3 months of courseware and are pretty happy with it. As part of the courseware and because it works with our timing, we are going to simultaneously start looking for our first rental property. I will get more into the nitty gritty of that process soon, but since this is a blog and not a novella, I bid you adieu.
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