New & Confused with Real Estate Investing

[gmartyn]

Hi All,
   I am new to the whole real estate investing, but I have been starting to research and get started and, but I wanted to start looking at properties, but don't know which numbers are more important, or better yet how do I know if I stumble across a good deal.

[Admin]

gmartyn,
Your questions are too broad to answer.  It would help to know where you want to start, where you want to end, and how you plan to get there.  

Granted, if you're like me, this may change daily,   , but you've got to have a gameplan from which to work.

[StacyKellams]

gmartyn,

Welcome to the board. Glad to have you.

Congrats on taking the first steps to learning this business. You have a lot of work ahead of you though.

Read everything on this site, attend investor meetings, and ask lots of questions. Don't be in too big a hurry to do your first deal until you know what you're doing.

Good deals come in all shapes and sizes. Here's an example of what a good rehab deal will look like.

Houses in area are selling for $120,000
You get the house for $60,000
House needs $15,000 in repairs

That's a money maker any way you slice it.

[hopeful]

Hello,
I am a new investor and am currently trying to write my goals for my first five years. I am optimistic, but want to try to have goals that are somewhat realistic. To that end, I would like to know what a reasonable (doable) target profit would be for buying and selling single family homes (non-manufactured).  To start, I will be searching for smaller homes in Austin and surrounding with an eventual sale price of aprox. $150,000.

I realize this is a very general question, but I'm just looking for an average. Currently I'm estimating that I will be able to make about $20,000 per home. Is that reasonable? Or am I way off base?

It would be very helpful if you seasoned guys out there could tell me;
What is the most you have made on a home in this price range?
What is the least?
What is your average?

Thanks in advance for your advice,
Caroline

[agkatz]

I think that sounds like a reasonable goal, if you're going to actually buy the house and put some work into it.  (Or not put some work into it, depending).

On the other hand, you can start by doing flips, in which case you might make $2K-$7K or more, depending on the how the numbers work out.  

What I've learned, in my limited experience, is that there really aren't any hard and fast rules.  However, it seems that targetting lower-priced houses will be easier to find good deals.  If I were still looking to invest in the Austin area, I would spend more time marketing to East Austin.

- Adam.
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