Yahoo Finance I’m a Real Estate Agent: How I Went From Making $5 an Hour To Owning Over 300 Properties
Anne Curry started her professional career making $5 an hour as a preschool teacher. Her desire to provide a better life for her family inspired her to become a real estate investor, and she now owns a portfolio of 300 units and 12 apartment buildings across Washington and Arizona.
Grant Cardone: These Will Be the Top Places To Buy Real Estate Over the Next Decade
More: 3 Things You Must Do When Your Savings Reach $50,000
GOBankingRates spoke with Curry about her real estate investing career and her best tips for others looking to build up their own real estate portfolios.
Sponsored: Get Paid To Scroll. Start Now
Pivoting Careers
Curry started out her working life as a preschool teacher because it was a career she was encouraged to enter.
“Growing up, my parents always told me that I would make an amazing teacher or caretaker of children as a career path,” she said. “When my husband and I got married at a young age, I fell into a preschool teacher role to help put my husband through college and support our living, while simultaneously making my parents happy in this career path.”
However, she soon realized that this career would not give her and her husband the financial stability she wanted.
“While a few members of my family owned some real estate, my husband and I got married knowing that with his job in the non-profit world and my job as a teacher, we would likely never own a home of our own,” Curry said. “After I had my two kids, I was at a community event where I first met a woman who told me that her husband owned and rented out 50 single-family homes. As soon as I met her and heard what her husband was doing, I knew deep in my gut that owning and renting real estate was what I wanted to do to support my family and help eventually put my kids through college.”
Curry asked the woman to introduce her to her husband, and he became her first real estate mentor who taught her hands-on how to flip and sell homes, as well as how to own rentals.
“From there, the rest is history!” she said.
I’m a Real Estate Agent: 6 Places I’d Retire If I Had $500,000
Learning from Mistakes
Along the way, Curry “made many mistakes,” but said that all of them ended up being great learning lessons.
“Some mistakes were on a property that I bought that maybe shouldn’t have and vice versa,” she said. “I also look back and regret selling certain properties too early and not being patient with the maximum amount of market appreciation. And, of course, there are stories of hiring bad contractors where I look back and want to both laugh and cry.”
Curry encourages other aspiring real estate investors to not get discouraged if they make a misstep when starting out.
“Even as hard as I tried not to make mistakes, when you are learning and growing, mistakes and learning lessons are inevitable,” she said.
Choosing the Right Properties
Selecting the right properties to buy, flip or rent is key to success as a real estate investor. Before investing in any property, Curry always asks herself three questions:
“What is the area like? To dig deeper into this, I look around the neighborhood and take mental notes on if this is an area that someone would want to live or raise their family in, or if it’s an area where there is growth and potential taking place.
“Will it cash flow? You can always make a property look beautiful, but the most important thing is that it cash flows and has the potential to cash flow even more in the future. You can’t always guarantee a large sum of cash coming in as soon as you buy it, but if your projections are in line and the property makes sense to have future cash-flow growth in the next few years, then it’s likely a good investment.
“What is your exit strategy? When buying an investment, you will eventually want to sell to either expand your portfolio and use that cash to buy a bigger property or you may just want to sell a few properties off for your own liquid cash. If the property’s layout is funky or if the area isn’t the greatest, you may have a harder time selling, so I always like to [keep] the end in mind and [consider] if this is a property that someone else would want to purchase in the future.”
Knowing When It’s Time To Sell
“As a ‘buy and hold’ type investor, my goal is to try not to sell,” Curry said. “I prefer to hold onto real estate and enjoy the equity growth and the paying down of my mortgages, all while the tenant is ‘buying’ the property for me.”
However, there are a few conditions that would lead Curry to sell a property.
“I try to sell just before we hit the top of the market cycle,” she said. “When everyone else is buying, I do the opposite! This is usually when prices are near the top. [I would also] wait to sell until I can scale into something bigger. One example is selling a duplex and using that money to buy a four-plex or six-plex. [Another reason I would sell is if] the area of the property has changed and is no longer attractive to potential renters.
“I also will sell a property if I intentionally bought the property to flip,” Curry continued. “When I sell my flip, the money from that is used as a down payment for the next property I decide to hold and rent.”
Her Best Advice
Curry’s best advice for aspiring real estate investors is to be patient.
“What I like to tell everyone who is getting started is that real estate investing is all about getting rich slow,” she said. “I mentor many new investors and I am always reminding them that owning rental properties isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme — it takes time. But, through time and appreciating markets, your property may be worth double its value in seven to 10 years.
“You can flip properties and get rich quickly but always be working for your time, or you can own rentals and get wealthy slowly through passive income,” Curry said. “I am all about creating wealth, so sometimes it just takes time — and that’s OK!”
More From GOBankingRates
I'm a Financial Expert: Here's How You Can Save $10K or More in the Next Year
How to Get $340/Year in Cash Back -- for Things You Already Buy
4 Reasons You Should Be Getting Your Paycheck Early, According to An Expert
10 Ways to Turn Your Six-Figure Salary Into Generational Wealth
This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: I’m a Real Estate Agent: How I Went From Making $5 an Hour To Owning Over 300 Properties
