Ryan Pineda - Flip Your Future: How to Quit Your Job, Live Your Dreams, And Make Six Figures Your First Year Flipping Real Estate

My Journey

G rowing up, I had no plans to pursue a career in real estate. I always wanted to be a professional baseball player. Im not sure Ive ever met anyone who wanted to be a real estate investor growing up. People from all walks of life end up in the industry somehow. Part of the reason I fell into it was because of my mom. She has been a real estate agent since before I was alive! I dont know what made her want to do it, but I know it provided our family with a great life growing up. We were always able to go on family vacations, baseball tournaments, and anything we wanted to do. So many of my friends parents couldnt come to baseball games or events because they were held down by their normal jobs. I noticed we never had those types of problems with my mom being in real estate and my dad being self-employed.

Fast forward to 2010. Im 21 years old and I had just completed my college baseball career at Cal State Northridge. I had been a Freshman All American, Freshman Conference Player of the Year, and an All Conference selection among other things. On Draft Day I was fortunate enough to hear my name called by the Oakland As. Finally, all my hard work had paid off and my dreams had come true. I signed my contract and began my professional career.

I will never forget that experience. Our team was in Vancouver, Canada and we got to play in front of 5,000 fans every single night. I was living my dream! But there is a funny thing about minor league baseball that a lot of people dont know: You dont get paid anything close to what the big leaguers get! Our salary was $1,200 a month. When you factor in how many hours we were at the field, weight room, and road trips, its actually less than minimum wage. To make matters worse, you only get paid in the season, which is about five months long. So my annual income was about $6,000. As you can see, thats not much to live on. As a result, most guys have to get an off-season job. So this was the beginning of my career in real estate.

I knew I needed something that would allow me to have my own schedule. A normal job wasnt going to let me leave for five months every year. I also needed the freedom to train and practice so I could work towards getting to the big leagues. So I took a play from my mom and decided to become a real estate agent. I finished real estate school a month later and passed the test. There was one problem, though. It was 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

We were still in a recession and Vegas was hit harder than any other city in the United States. So it was extremely hard to find clients! To make matters worse, the commissions werent much when I did close deals! I made about $20,000 that first year as an agent. I had no idea what I was doing and looking back at it now, I was very fortunate to have made that much.

Being an agent taught me a lot of things, though. It helped me learn how to write contracts, negotiate with other agents, and search the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) for deals. In 2011, my cousin and I decided we wanted to buy a house together. After months of searching, we settled on a nice four-bedroom home for $160,000. That same home had sold for $400,000 just a couple of years earlier!

If Im being honest, it wasnt even a good deal. It was where we wanted to live and it fit our needs so we bought it. We also rented out the other two rooms to our buddies. That house quickly turned into a mess with the four of us, but it was a blast!

After about two years there, we decided it was time to sell and cash out. We both didnt have a lot of money so it was the logical thing to do. During those two years the market appreciated and we were able to sell it for $215,000. I didnt know it at the time, but that would be the first of many flips. If the market had not appreciated, I wouldnt have been able to make a profit. So my first flip ended up being a success because of pure luck!

After that first flip, I had a little bit of money and I decided to buy another property. This time it was a good deal, so I had equity built in from the start. I was also about to leave for another baseball season so I rented it out.

A couple things happened after that. As the season went on, I started to run low on money. I was engaged to my fiance, Mindy, and we had a wedding we needed to pay for. So I thought to myself that it would be a good idea to sell the home. I told the tenant what that I was selling it and a funny thing happened. They wanted to buy the house! So we agreed on a price and they ended up buying it. I owned the property for six months and made a $26,000 profit on it.

Later that year, Mindy and I got married. We had spent most of the profit on the wedding and a new car. Because of that, we had to live in an apartment. We believed that God would provide another home for us if we were patient. Almost six months later, He did and we moved into our first real home together.