As a software engineer I assume you have some math skills. You can make one time income with capital gains or recurring income with positive cash flow. “Steady income” sounds like buy, hold, rent and someday sell. Analyse a few deals. Is income higher than total expenses? Keep looking until it is. Or you’ll have to invest for capital gains. Talk to landlords in the area you are looking at. How the heck are they making money? Every business and rental must have made sense to someone at some time. Landlording is a whole 'nother enchilada than crunching numbers. If you own a house you can wait until it will at least break even as a rental and go out and buy another owner occupied house. This takes decades, but isn’t particulary difficult. You might have three or four rentals by the time you retire. I can assure you there is life after engineering.
Good Luck,
Speednxs
I just have some questions. I have been a software engineer the past five years and the hours and lack of job stability are getting to me. My dad has been in Real Estate for over twenty years and has been trying to get me involved. He has his own appraising business. I am not really intrested in appraising, but in I am in investing.
I am looking for suggestions in what area of investing I should be looking to get involved in. I basically want to be able to eventually leave my job as a Software engineer. I have read some books, but I am not intrested in no money down\bad credit\make millions fast deals. I want to do something that will allow me to bring in steady income. I have excellent credit and some money. Plus I will be owning a house in Oct that I could use as equity.
I was looking for suggestions from you all as to what is the best form of investing that could bring in a steady income based on my background? My dad knows areas and has access to MLS. He also has relationships with mortage companies. So he has some exp he could shareFor example should I be looking for single fam rentals, commerical rentals, fix em uppers or something else? Is there any area where my technical backgroud would be an advantage?
I am in the same exact situation. I too am a software engineer, who is yearning to get the hell out, and my father has been a RE investor since the mid 80’s.
What I’ve been doing is going to all the open houses on Sundays to get an idea of what each type of property is selling for and in what kind of condition. I’ve been doing this since last Oct. I am now able to spot a good deal when I see one (depending on its condition). My plans are to buy, fix, and sell all within a 3-4 month period. Take the profits and do a 1031 exchange and keep increasing the pot till I am able to put down 30-40% on a large residential or commerical unit.
Get yourself hooked up with a real estate agent who can get you access to MLS and you can do your own analysis. Since you can code, you can create your own analysis tools. I’ve created one that takes the list of solds and maps it to MS Mapoint and shows me a graphical representation of what each part of the city is selling for. As you know with application development, the sky is the limit…
Good luck