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Mentor
House hack. It’s the fastest and cheapest way to get into real estate. It looks like you are in college, so at this point save up money, and try to get the best job you can. I don’t care what any Tik Tok or Instagram “guru” says, it’s is very difficult and take a long time to replace a good w-2 income. So get a great paying job first.
So once you take care of that, look for multi family houses. Let’s say you find a duplex (the strategy im going to tell you works up to a 4 unit property) you can live in one unit (I take the worse looking unit) and rent the other unit (better looking unit usually gets higher rent.
By living in one unit, you qualify to purchase the house with a conventional loan, instead of investment loan. This allows you to put down as little at 3.5%, and in most cases will get you a lower interest rate as well, compared to investment property loans. The caveat is you typically have to agree to live in one unit for a minimum of a year (unless you have a major life event, like getting a higher paying job out of the state)
With this strategy, you prob won’t hit positive cash flow for the first year, because you are only renting one unit, but it will significantly reduce your living expenses. For example, when I did this the first time, I rented the first floor of my duplex and had to pay about $800 a month in the renaming Mortage, wifi and utilities for my 2nd floor 3 bedroom apartment. In comparison if I rented a 3 bedroom apartment, it would have cost me upwards of 2k.
After a year you can start seeing positive cash flow by renting the remaining units. After I rented out the 2nd floor of my duplex I’m now seeing about $900 of cash flow a month.
After you move out, hopefully you saved up some money and can rinse and repeat.
I hope this helps, and good luck.
Subject Expert
Start listening to the “Real Estate Rookies” podcast from Bigger Pockets.
Make sure you have enough capital first. So many people out there making mistakes by taking out equity line of credit with no cash reserves.
Mentor
No capital means cash.