Weekly Update #1 - Starting My Journey

The start (sort of) of my journey!

Who I am

Hi! My name is Will Hammond. As of the time that I am writing this (December 2021), I am a Junior in college at Columbia University. I aim for this blog to be a history, both for me and whoever reads this, of my journey from being 20 years old with no real estate to owning 10 million dollars in real estate. My goal is to accomplish this in 10 years (and I almost called this blog 10 years to 10 million) but I am open to this journey taking more time as well. After all, I haven’t even bought my first property!

I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and still think of it as my home for the time being. I may buy my first property here this summer or, if that is not a possibility, I will house-hack my first property after I graduate from college and settle in a new city. Determining whether or not I can realistically house-hack a property for the summer is my immediate priority and something that I will be writing more about very soon. Quickly, I want to explain my goals for this blog. Then, I should explain where I am so far in my personal finance, real estate, and financial independence journey.

What is this blog?

This blog will document my journey to owning 10 million dollars in real estate. I want to record the lessons I learn, the mistakes that I make, and the people that I meet along the way. I will be posting weekly updates about things I learn and actions that I take in the hopes that this journey is replicable for other young people like me. I’ll also be posting book summaries and informational articles about key investing and real estate concepts. In part, this blog is for me too. I want to share with others because I know that it will help me learn and grow much more quickly. I also want to be accountable, of course! I should know that I am slacking if my weekly updates don’t contain anything new to share. With that, let me highlight where I am right now and what I have done (and not done) so far.

So far

I became fascinated by the idea of financial freedom a little over a year ago. So far, my journey toward this goal has primarily consisted of educating myself. I will admit, I consider this a very passive exercise and I look forward to taking much more active steps toward my goals from now on. To start, I have had a decent relationship with money and personal finance my whole life. When I was younger, I enjoyed tracking my spending with spreadsheets and counting up my balances between my cash and savings account. And yet, I would still end up spending my money recklessly because I didn’t understand the true power that it held. I invested here and there, but only with small amounts of money because I was scared of what could happen if I lost it.

In the past year and change, though, I have truly begun to understand the power of accumulating and deploying your capital. It started with a few podcasts, Youtube channels, and books. I am very thankful to BiggerPockets and their network of podcasts from Real Estate Rookie to BiggerPockets Money to the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast as well as How to Money from iHeartPodcasts. I should also give plenty of credit to a few YouTube channels including Graham Stephan and Our Rich Journey. These resources taught me things that I had vaguely understood for man years about the power of investing. However, they also introduced me to an entire new prospect of investing in real estate and exposed the myriad benefits of this asset class.

Since being exposed to these ideas, I have been working, saving, and investing with my goal being to buy my first property in the near future. At the time of writing this, I have saved approximately $50,000 with $18,000 of that allocated to a total market index fund and S&P 500 index in my Roth IRA, $25,000 earmarked for my first property sitting in a high-interest savings account, and the rest distributed between cash, collectibles, and one questionable NFT investment. The source of that income has primarily been my job where I have been working full-time throughout the summer and school as well as some profits from an NFT investment in early 2021 and a successful but short-lived retail arbitrage operation. As I am still in school, I obviously aim to invest my time and education wisely toward securing a high-paying job after graduation as well. To be completely honest here, I haven’t pursued this avenue as successfully as I could have so far but I am not neglecting it either. Income is the primary lever toward financial freedom after all! I am double majoring in Computer Science and Economics and tech is a very lucrative industry but I am not so sure that it is where my passions lie. That is something for me to continue discovering along this journey but I don’t plan on writing much about it here since that isn’t the focus of this blog.

What's next?

My action plan now is clear. I need to identify the location, financing, and potential partners to buy my first rental property. I have identified my area of focus as small multi-family rental units and aim to purchase a duplex, triplex, or fourplex as a house hack. What do I not know? Well, I don’t yet know if it will be feasible to purchase a property this summer. First of all, I don’t yet know if I will be in Portland this summer or interning elsewhere (whoops!) but I also do not know for sure what kind of financing I could secure. I know that I can use a low down payment FHA loan for up to four units but I can’t satisfy the owner-occupied requirement when I live in New York for school for 9 months of the year. Is there a workaround for this? Could I partner with another investor who does plan to live in Portland for at least 6 months of the next year? These are questions that I will be finding answers to in the short term as I also explore traditional financing.

I also want to grow my network of fellow investors! I want to grow alongside others and find groups in which myself and fellow investors can hold each other accountable and push ourselves toward bigger goals. That is part of why I started this blog and hopefully, some people do read it someday and reach out to me. The BiggerPockets forums will undoubtedly be where I start, though!

And that's it for now!

I don’t want this first post to be too long and I have plenty to do this week before posting my next update. I’ll also be posting a short summary of The Landlord Entrepreneur by Bryan Chavis which I am currently reading in the next couple of days.

If you read this whole article, thanks! I’m super glad you found your way to this site and I hope you’ll join me for more articles. Please reach out to me if you are a fellow investor or a young driven person who is interested in financial freedom. I would love to collaborate, share ideas, or form a mastermind group to collectively work toward our goals. My contacts and social media are linked throughout this website so feel free to email me, message me on LinkedIn, connect with me on the BiggerPockets forums, or follow me on Twitter.
Best of luck with your financial journey!

-Will Hammond

Weekly Update #1 – Starting My Journey