There’s nothing like spending hundreds of hours looking for property, finding a great deal—and not being able to buy your first investment property.
I should know. This was my life for years. I listened to hundreds of BiggerPockets podcasts, read dozens of real estate books, and underwrote hundreds of properties. At that point, my real estate portfolio consisted of our primary residence and nothing more.
At that point, I was pretty frustrated. I knew I was better than what my portfolio consisted of—I just didn’t have the money to put down on a rental property. I had been working a stressful job, making just enough to live paycheck to paycheck comfortably.
Now, keep in mind that there are strategies out there where you can put little to no money down, but I was (and still am) into multifamily syndications, where I needed to put in some capital.
At the rate we were saving money, it would have taken about seven to 10 years to save a $50,000 investment. That would have been just one investment property. It would have taken years just to get into another property. That was not a timeline I was okay with. At the time, $50,000 was more than I was making in one full year at my job (eventually, I would get a sales job that paid better, though).
I was still determined to invest in real estate, but I was getting more and more frustrated by not being able to come up with the capital. The route we were taking was not going to work for my family in the long run. I thought about borrowing money, credit card advances, etc., but I just could not make it work.
In the meantime, I was still looking for properties any chance I could. That wasn’t great for me since it only made me feel worse—like I wasn’t living up to my potential. I still wasn’t able to invest, even though our cash flow was improving.
The Turning Point in My Investing Journey
Sometime later, by random chance, I watched a YouTube video that was not real…