Margaret Kim was born and raised in Chicago and is building her lifestyle and retirement income there. A former computer scientist, she quickly tired of working in the corporate IT industry. She had an entrepreneurial bent and started and ran several businesses while searching for the one that is her current passion.
Margaret was looking for a business that would provide her not only with financial freedom, but time freedom and flexibility as well. She enjoys home schooling her children and traveling and this lifestyle is not typically found in the corporate world.
She grew up as the daughter of an electrician that would house his family in homes that he would fix and flip. While she didn’t always fully enjoy the experience while growing up, she did realize that each time he did that, they were able to use the proceeds from the sale of a house to buy a larger and better house the next time. Her dad was actually a house flipper and she eventually realized the value in that.
Margaret ended up becoming a house flipper herself, after realizing that this was, for her, the perfect place to invest her money. She stated, “I wasn’t really savvy with investing in the stock market. And I knew that real estate, even when the market drops, you still end up with a pile of dirt at the end of the day. They can’t take that away from you.
Real estate is tangible to me. I can touch it. I can feel it. I can walk in and I can see where I can make improvements. And if I walk into a place and I believe there’s value to be added, I know how to maximize that.”
Having made millions in real estate in the past eight years, Margaret finds herself in the position of helping others do the same thing. It’s her goal to use her expertise to help others replace their income and build a comfortable passive retirement income, whatever that amount might be. She provides education on how to flip houses the right way.
“My goal for people, and this is what I teach people, is how to replace your income. So whatever your income is, you will have the resources in that demographic to be able to flip houses. For example, if you’re making $100,000 a year, then I can show you in 3 to 5 years how to completely replace your income with residual income,” says Margaret.
Her process involves buying and fixing a house, flipping it for a profit and then investing that profit in a rental house. Wash, rinse and repeat. Over time, you build a residual passive income of significant size. She does not recommend spending the profits but continually re-investing them. She teaches people how to build a really solid real estate investment portfolio.
She finds that people are initially scared by the prospect of investing in real estate this way. “I think a lot of people are just intimidated by it. And it’s true. There is a lot to real estate investing. But if you break it down, it’s not complicated. You find a house. You fix a house. You sell a house.
But a lot of people get emotionally attached to it. They start thinking of it as their house. And the reality is you only need to find one family whose dream house this is. And so if you can keep the emotions out of it, and just treat it like a business, I think that’s one of the things that keeps people from getting into it.”
One aspect which Margaret Kim finds particularly appealing is meeting the family, usually a first-time home buyer, who is buying her finished properties. She loves helping others find a home which she helped to create.
A pet peeve of Margaret’s is when people try to teach this type of real estate investing when they haven’t actually done it. The experience she has acquired from getting down and dirty and doing it herself over and over again is what allows her to coach people and share a strategy that works.
She says, “I think what I would like to emphasize is the fact that you can use the real estate market as an investment tool so that you can have the lifestyle that you want.”
And that is a good thing.
To learn more about Margaret Kim, visit: FlipChick.net.