24-year-old Real Estate Investor Buys Over $4 mil in Property

A 24, old African American real estate investor from Tennessee has already purchased over 75 homes in the Chattanooga area in the four short years he's been in the business. This level of success is often not attained until much later in life, but Al Chapman is no ordinary 20 something.

(PRWEB) December 5, 2004 -- Bucking national real estate ownership trends, Al Chapman, an African American at the age of 24, has already accumulated over $4 million in property. Chapman has bought over 75 single-family homes in the four short years hes been in real estate investment. A full time real estate investor, Chapman wasted no time getting started on his career.

I dont keep score, I just enjoy what I do," said Chapman. I really like taking older, ugly homes and making them beautiful again, and its always great to work with sellers who are trying to get out of a neighborhood or need to sell their home quickly; its rewarding to help them solve those problems."

A native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Chapman went to Colgate University in upstate New York where he started his first business, CoolWallstreet.com, a stock market simulator web site. Only 19 when the company started, the company enjoyed considerable success until it succumbed to the dot-com fallout. But Chapmans determination to succeed did not stop there.

His next venture was into real estate investment, where he and a friend purchased their first home with just a thousand dollars a piece. I really saw it as more of a hobby than anything," said Chapman. But it turned into a bit of a nightmare. We made all the beginner mistakes. We didnt get an inspection, we did all the repair work ourselves and we went well over our $1,000 a piece budget."

After spending all summer repairing the house, Chapman bought out his partner and wound up making almost a 70 percent return on the home and was hooked on real estate investing. Since he began, Chapman has bought 75 homes, rehabbing them, sometimes keeping them as rental properties and other times selling them to beginner investors. Homes have ranged in price from as low as $4,000 up to $90,000.

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