The Real Estate Investing Journey

We are first and foremost slaves to Christ called to full time ministry of re-presenting who Jesus is to us to the rest of the world. Right now that ministry includes a typical 40 hour a week job and (trying at least) to be a light to our co-workers around us. We feel called of God to one day leave the typical 40 hour a week type of provision to more of a financially independent type of provision. We will then have time free to take the Gospel to a more diverse audience, as well as be able finance other ministries. How will we have this financial independence? Right now the vehicle is real estate (God could change this on us at any time).

Why did we create this blog? Because we were once like many of you, we had dreams of succeeding in investing in real estate but went through hard times or disappointments. Maybe you have yet to take any action, or you've had bad experiences with real estate. It is very important to surround yourself with people who have succeeded so they can cheer you on when problems come, or on those days when you are down. That is what we hope to achieve, we want to cheer you on and somehow show you that it can be done to get you through that valley. Of course your best cheerleader is God, pray for the items you need and He will give them to you.

We still have not 'made it' by any stretch of the imagination, but we have gone through a good amount of 'hard knocks' and 'street lessons' and yet we still have the same passion for RE as we did on day one. We would like to encourage those who are discouraged/curious to keep going. We would also like to challenge people who think RE investing is not for them and cause them to pause and rethink and reconsider real estate as a possibility again even though they may have written it off.

With tons of how-to resources out there about real estate, we don't need to become another one of those. I would argue that the emotional aspect of investing is just as or more important than the nuts and bolts of how to invest in real estate. That is our goal, to take you on this at times scary/exciting/disappointing/empowering roller coaster ride with us to give you an opportunity to keep your emotions in check. We also always want advice from those who are farther along this journey than we are because we ourselves still have a ways to go.

One word of caution though, we do not take advice from those who have not succeeded, i.e. we do not want to hear about your real estate failures and horror stories. For example, we would gladly take input and advice from someone who has 10 rent houses which are cash flowing nicely. We do *not* want to hear from someone who tried to sell their house in this market and could not, so decided to rent it out and got a tenant that destroyed it. Why don't we want to hear from the latter? Because for them real estate was an afterthought, we want those around us who real estate investing is their craft, who constantly seek to improve their craft. Those are the ones that can truly represent to us the reality of what is going on out there in the REI world.

This is good advice for everyone about all aspects of life. Be careful who you talk to and listen to, to me most people are dream-killers... and I think they aren't that way maliciously (although some may be)... they may have altruistic motives and want to help you avoid what they think is a pitfall... but they are misguided. If you want to make a million dollars a year, who would you ask for advice? Someone making $30,000 a year, or Warren Buffet?

But, if for nothing else this blog will be a creative/emotional outlet for us to go back and read and see where we came from and have gone to. We hope and pray that you can glean from us to propel yourself to success.