For as far back as I could remember, I’ve always had a passion for real estate and interior design and since purchasing my first property at the age of 21 I knew that I wanted to turn that passion into a business. Several homes and gut renovations later – and a lot of life happening in between – I was ready to shift from buying and renovating homes for myself to investing in and developing real estate. In 2021, as the world was trying to figure out the new post-pandemic normal, I was doing the same. Newly divorced and rebuilding my life after selling our family home and changing companies after 23 years – my entire adult life, I was determined to maximize the fresh start that I had.
A series of what I thought were setbacks in the sale of our house had actually turned into opportunities that enabled me to purchase two properties in 2021, a condo and a house that I was planning to gut renovate, and as fate would have it, I was able to purchase a third property in 2022. With two recently completed purchases in 2021 and a gut renovation on the horizon, I wasn’t exactly looking to purchase another property but I’m also never not looking. And in the spring of 2022, my friend and broker told me about a house in Bedford Stuyvesant – the neighborhood that I grew up in, that was in need of a deep renovation and was about to hit the market.
The lessons learned and strength gained through the pandemic, divorce, and prior sale and purchases gave me a new urgency about life and a new level of determination mixed with a slight attitude that if it is meant for me then it will be mine, Nervous and excited, I decided to proceed and quickly learned that an investment purchase is very different to the purchases I’ve made in the past. Despite this being the sixth property that I’ve purchased, this was a learning curve – from the lender, to the insurance, and legal structure – the same rules did not apply and according to the contract, I had 30 days to figure it out. Two weeks past the contract closing date I had the keys in my hand and two weeks later my contractor was on the job.
I got my real estate salesperson license at the beginning of 2022 which helped the learning curve slightly but there’s nothing like learning from experience. Although I don’t plan to be an active agent, I highly recommend taking the course if you’re interested in learning about real estate in general. I’ll cover updates on the properties under the Home section of this site so stay tuned.
