Tim Mai

About me:

My brother and I escaped Vietnam on a fishing boat in 1986. I was 11 years old and my brother was 18 at the time. We spent seven days and six nights at sea and were mugged by pirate boats. They stripped us of all our valuables, but, luckily, didn't kill us as happened with other unfortunate escapees. Eventually, a Malaysian boat picked us up, and we spent six months in a refugee camp before being transferred to a camp in the Philippines. After a short stay there, the United States accepted us, and we ended up in Houston. Neither my brother nor I had much money, so we lived in a two-bedroom apartment-with eight to 12 other single guys! Needless to say, it was crowded, and some of our roommates weren't the best people. One day, I came home from school to find out the apartment had been raided by the FBI looking for drugs and illegal hand guns! Although my brother and I were poor and dressed in clothes bought from charity organizations, we worked hard. I graduated from high school, went to college, and worked in the IT field for two years. I had a good job, but, in 2002, the software company I worked for crashed and went out of business. There I was without a job! I'd always heard that real estate was the place to make good money I started studying by taking home study courses and attending seminars to gather the basic knowledge I needed. Then, I began knocking on the doors of homeowners for a few months and discovered very quickly that no one wanted to talk to me! Realizing that door-knocking was not an effective method of getting deals, I become a "bird dog" for other real estate investors. A bird dog finds good leads for investors and then is paid for those leads that pan out. In the meantime, I worked at finding my own deals. After about four months, I found a good one. I bought a home for $55,000 and put $22,000 worth of repairs into it. I sold the home for $134,000 dollars at a five-day auction. I earned a $57,000 profit (minus 3% of the buyer's closing costs)! This kind of profit doesn't happen every time, of course. But through a combination of luck and hard work, I was on my way in a real estate career!