San Diego, CA Newbie

[Traver Freeman]

Hello everyone. My name is Traver Freeman, I'm new here and I live in San Diego. I did a quick search and there seems to be lots of new folks from San Diego in the past few months. So hello from another one!

My wife and I just moved to San Diego and we love it here, but the cost of living is quite a bit higher than we expected. We moved here for family as my in-laws recently moved here. I work a 9-5, but entry-level doesn't really help pay the bills and my wife is a stay-at-home mom with our almost 1 year old. So I started to look for additional ways to support my family. My uncle is a Buy and Hold investor, so I wanted to do something similar. I've had a desire to get involved with real estate for about 6 months to a year now and a month ago I decided to start getting serious about it.

I started Googling real estate books and found myself on the BP Ultimate Beginner's Guide. From there, I bought two books I'm currently reading, starting listening to the BP podcasts and have listened to 13 of them in the last two weeks (about one a day). I'm continuing to learn more and more about the various sources of financing and types of investing.

I am very interested in getting started with a multi-family property, living in one of the units and renting out the others. The problem I'm having is finding a property I can afford in the San Diego area. The duplexes, triplexes, and 4-plexes around here all seem to be 400k-700k, and that's one of the cheapest parts of the county. With just mortgage, mortgage/home insurance, and taxes, I'd be looking at 4,000+/mo. Apartments in my area rent for 1400/mo. I'd be in the hole each month before we're even talking about expenses and vacancies. The numbers don't seem to add up.

On the other end of the spectrum, I've briefly viewed properties where we went to college in Florida, and I could buy a 4-plex for 170k, pay 850/mo, rent out three units for 600/mo ea, and net +900/mo minus expenses, plus live rent free myself. Is this type of investment possible in San Diego?

If we can't make something work here, we may end up moving back to Florida, but we'd really like to stay here. So I thought I'd listen to the podcasts and get involved in the forums. I welcome any advice, thoughts, or ideas.

[Ali Boone]

I'll get slapped by plenty of people who disagree with buying outside your local area, but I highly recommend it. What's the point in buying something nearby if it's only going to cost you money each month? The only hope for profit at that point would be gaining appreciation, but that's a speculative move and a different ballgame than shooting for cash flow. If you aren't bringing in cash flow each month, all the areas for potential profit aren't guaranteed, so you only keep losing in hopes the others pan out.