Real Estate Investing Advice

[Benjamin Bary]

Hi all,

Just working out my criteria and goals for RE investing and I was wondering if the information below can help members here direct me to good ideas that I'm missing and/or correct any ill conceived plans

I'm 39, have about 10K saved up, and I'm going forward with a buy and hold strategy. A few other points of my investing strategy:

• single family homes
• 175K-250K price range
• Equity position between 20-70%
• Looking for properties that need some work and
• 15-20% under market value

Basically for the first few years I'm trying to stay away from the the higher end market (commercial and multifamily) but somewhere down the road (2-4 years) I'd be interested in these areas.

I believe you need a niche market to focus on, master that niche, and only move out of your niche if you want to work on another niche.

Two books that I'm garnering most of my ideas and plans from: The Millionaire Real Estate Investor -- Gary Keller

I'm also reading William Nickerson's, "How I Turned $1,000 into Three Million...." but since it's a bit out dated I'm just trying to glean whatever I can from this well written guidebook. I find his formula of 100 x gross monthly income for single family homes and buildings with 4 units or more 10 x fixed annual net income to be a good measuring sticks for finding properties -- but is it realistic? Anything anyone could mention about this?

I live in LA and everyone that I talk to here that wants to do RE investing saying -- "California is too hard" and "it won't work here, the LA market is too pricey". What do you think of these statements?

Best regards and please feel free to open up on anything you feel might be of help

Thanks,

Ben Bary

[Will Barnard]

I would disagree with that. In fact, my first investments were out of state. What I would recommend is that you have the right team in place and complete your DD Before you invest.

That said, buy and hold is not the only strategy available and as such, CA does offer many other alternatives. I am currently investing here in CA and am doing quite well.