Unemployed College Grad

Graduation day. Full of excitement and unemployed.

My Current Project

I just graduated college in one of the worst economic climates of recent years. Just last month, 131,000 jobs have been lost in the United States. Now, hold on. I have a four-year degree from a well-respected private university, getting a job should be no problem, right? WRONG. Let me tell you from a person currently living in the trenches of this job-hunt warfare, it has not been a fun process. I have sent my resume to over fifty potential employers with only a fraction even responding with an email confirmation, let alone an interview opportunity. Now, every time I send my resume somewhere I have the feeling I am sending it into a blackhole never to see it again.  I’m not telling you this so you can feel sorry for me (although, if you know someone hiring, go ahead and feel sorry for me and refer that person to my resume). I’m telling you this to explain my current situation and what I am choosing to do with my spare time to make the most of it (other than writing this blog).

A Brief History

For several years now, I have been very intrigued by the idea of investing in real estate. Growing up, my Dad always told my brothers and I really interesting stories of when he was younger and would invest in real estate with his Dad.  I always thought that that sounded like something fun to do while learning a lot of important lifelong skills and making some money on the side. So, over the past couple of years I started reading real estate investing books, asking questions, and just imagining what that would look like specifically for me. Fast-forward to Fall semester of my senior year of college. I had been learning a lot in my business classes and I wanted to actually apply some of the ideas I had been learning in a real business environment. So, I bought a notebook, called my Dad and asked him how I could get started in real estate investing. At that time, my goal was to purchase a home within a short distance from my school and rent it out to fellow college students. My thinking was that there was a unique opportunity to be had there because I knew the area, I knew the students, and I knew that they would be willing to pay a ‘premium’ price per month because so many people live in one house.

After working seriously towards this goal and working closely with a real estate agent, I began to think what my post-college plans would be. I decided that I would be moving home to the Bay Area after college and with the time constraint of the end of the school year, I decided to hold off on my real estate pursuits until I moved back home. Although I didn’t meet my original goal of buying a house that school year, I learned a tremendous amount about what it takes to seriously invest in real estate: A lot of work. Although real estate investing can take on many different forms, when I say “real estate investing” I am more specifically talking about purchasing single family homes that are somewhat distressed, add value to them by fixing them up, and then selling them and, hopefully, if done correctly, making a profit. (Note: I stay away from the term “house-flipping” because that generally has a negative connotation to some and is significantly more risky and usually involves never actually taking ownership of the property.)

Today

Since I have moved back home, my friend Kyle and I met up and came up with a plan to purchase a house to live in while we fix it up and sell it within 12 months. We set an aggressive goal of being in contract to buy a house by September 1st of this year. Since that conversation we have been working hard to learn the market, find our target price, and working closely with a real estate agent. Our focus has been set primarily on bank-owned properties that are in need of some work and have the opportunity to add value to them. While I continue to job search, I spend a considerable amount of my day pursuing real estate investing trying to stay as productive as possible during this unique time of post-graduation-pre-career. So far, we have made offers on two different properties. The first property we made an offer on, the seller (a bank) was not willing to go down to the price we believed the property was worth. The second property we made an offer on we are still waiting to hear back from the seller. That is where Kyle and I currently stand on our current real estate pursuits. I will cover what this looks like on a day-to-day basis for me in a later blog post. For now, I wanted to explain my current situation and how I am trying to make the most out of my time as an unemployed college grad living at my parents house.

Advertisement

Why I Blog

If you think about what a blog is, it’s kind of silly. A place for people to write whatever they want for as long as they want and “publish” it to the World Wide Web for everybody in the world to read. The thing is, almost nobody reads a majority of the blogs out there, apart from that particular blogger’s girlfriend, parents, and best friend. Then there is the blogger who takes themselves far too seriously and you find yourself grimacing at their sesquipedalian posts of normal mundane things.

Now, to answer the question of why I blog. I blog because I have grown up around technology and the web and have always had a general fascination with trying and experimenting with new social mediums.  While blogging itself is certainly not new, it is new to me, therefore I want to give it a go. Also, I am highly interested in social media and I already have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., etc. I figure I might as well add blogging to the mix. More than anything, I think blogs offer people a great way to communicate their thoughts and opinions while creating another environment for conversation to take place. Now, Will my blog be one that is only read by my girlfriend, parents, and best friends? Perhaps. Will I use analytics and track every single “hit” that my blog gets? Definitely. Will I take myself too seriously? I’ll certainly try not to. Will I post on my other social media outlets every time I create a new post? Of course, because I read your blogs when you post them, so I expect you to do the same! (ok that’s not true, I don’t read all of them, but I do read some).

Finally, you can expect to read about my current adventures in my post-graduate-pre-career life while I try to stay productive and pursue some lofty goals. I mean, what better time to start a blog than while I’m unemployed? Am I right? I’ll be posting about a variety of topics varying from my current pursuit to buy an investment property to my fan-boyism of all things Apple. I hope you like what you read.

–  Colby