Reed Goossens – Invest in Yourself First, Learn and Take Action

Reed Goossens moved to the United States in 2012 to pursue a career in structural engineering, however he then discovered a passion for real-estate investing. With limited funds and no credit, Reed went from purchasing a small duplex to growing his own real estate investing firm, RSN Property Group. Reed now syndicates large multimillion-dollar deals across the US and certainly lives up to the “never-say-die” Aussie attitude when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur. Reed is also the host of the up-and-coming podcast, Investing in the US: An Aussie’s Guide to US Real Estate (and has recently published a book of the same title), wherein he invites other distinguished real estate investors and entrepreneurs to speak with him about their success and help guide other international investors who want to successfully invest in the US.   “The ARV (After Repair Value) was not large enough to justify how much money we ended up spending to add this third story.”   Reed Goossens    Worst investment ever ‘Networking on steroids’ typifies Aussie engineer’s view of first real estate event in US Reed moved the United States in early 2012 and was without a job, so he took the brave move of walking the streets of New York City to visit every engineering firm he could find, with his portfolio in hand and saying, “Hey, give me a job!” He quotes Tony Robbins, who says: “One ‘yes’ will change your life”. And it did. He looked at medium-sized firms, and admiring his spirit, one actually did employ him. Within two weeks of moving to the US, he was at his first real estate networking event, and he realized the Americans were on a different level than he was coming from Australia. He called the US experience “networking on steroids”. Learning about US property Realizing he had much to learn in his new home country, he spent the next six months doing just that. He realized quickly however how low the barriers to entry to the property market are in the US compared to those in in Australia, in that he could go out and buy a property for US$38,000. He was amazed, stating that you could never buy in Australia for under around $250,000-$300,000. He visited upstate New York and bought a number of properties but quickly ran out of his own money and banks were shy about lending to this new arrival. So he found a partner, and with him, started looking at properties in Philadelphia, as he wanted to try his hand at flipping houses. He was confident he could do so as a chartered structural engineer who had worked on many ground-up developments, including the London 2012 Olympic Games site. Reed finds a partner and they buy a row house in Philadelphia to flip So, he and his business partner bought an early 1900s two-story row house in Philadelphia for $110,000. Their goal was to add a story to match adjacent houses and make this row house similar to others in the city and those in New York, and thereby add value to the property. Reed did all the structural engineering drawings and they hired a general contractor (GC). Contractor’s thievery and other horrors make for a lengthy and costly project And here Reed explains the two main...