Jon Taylor Sweet / Jon Taylor SweetAnne Curry started her professional career making $5 an hour as a preschool teacher. Her desire to provide a better life for her family inspired her to become a real estate investor, and she now owns a portfolio of 300 units and 12 apartment buildings across Washington and Arizona.Grant Cardone: These Will Be the Top Places To Buy Real Estate Over the Next DecadeMore: 3 Things You Must Do When Your Savings Reach $50,000GOBankingRates spoke with Curry about her real estate investing career and her best tips for others looking to build up their own real estate portfolios.Sponsored: Get Paid To Scroll. Start NowPivoting CareersCurry started out her working life as a preschool teacher because it was a career she was encouraged to enter.“Growing up, my parents always told me that I would make an amazing teacher or caretaker of children as a career path,” she said. “When my husband and I got married at a young age, I fell into a preschool teacher role to help put my husband through college and support our living, while simultaneously making my parents happy in this career path.”However, she soon realized that this career would not give her and her husband the financial stability she wanted.“While a few members of my family owned some real estate, my husband and I got married knowing that with his job in the non-profit world and my job as a teacher, we would likely never own a home of our own,” Curry said. “After I had my two kids, I was at a community event where I first met a woman who told me that her husband owned and rented out 50 single-family homes. As soon as I met her and heard what her husband was doing, I knew deep in my gut that owning and renting real estate was what I wanted to do to support my family and help eventually put my kids through college.”Curry asked the woman to introduce her to her husband, and he became her first real estate mentor who taught her hands-on how to flip and sell homes, as well as how to own rentals.Story continues“From there, the rest is history!” she said.I’m a Real Estate Agent: 6 Places I’d Retire If I Had $500,000Learning from MistakesAlong the way, Curry “made many mistakes,” but said that all of them ended up being great learning lessons.“Some mistakes were on a property that I bought that maybe shouldn’t have and vice versa,” she said. “I also look back and regret selling certain properties too early and not being patient with the maximum amount of market appreciation. And, of course, there are stories of hiring bad contractors where I look back and want to both laugh and cry.”Curry encourages other aspiring real estate investors to not get discouraged if they make a misstep when starting out.“Even as hard as I tried not to make mistakes, when you are learning and growing, mistakes and learning lessons are inevitable,” she said.Choosing the Right PropertiesSelecting the right properties to buy, flip or rent is key to success as a real estate investor. Before investing in any property, Curry always asks herself three questions:“What is the area like? To dig deeper into this, I look around the neighborhood and take mental notes on if this is an area that someone would want to live or raise their family in, or if it’s an area where there is growth and potential taking place.“Will it cash flow? You can always make a property look beautiful, but the most important thing is that it cash flows and has the potential to cash flow even more in the future. You can’t always guarantee a large sum of cash coming in as soon as you buy it, but if your projections are in line and the property makes sense to have future cash-flow growth in the next few years, then it’s likely a good investment.“What is your exit strategy? When buying an investment, you will eventually want to sell to either expand your portfolio and use that cash to buy a bigger property or you may just want to sell a …
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