Start house hack in LA or invest out of state

[Tucker Singletary]

Hi everyone, looking for some “what would you do in my shoes” advice from some seasoned investors here. Wife and I are young professionals in our 20s currently living in West LA for work. I’ve been saving and learning a ton about real estate and eager to get started. We’ve got about 30k liquid cash to invest and could potentially double/triple that as needed by selling some company stock (havent done that yet because the stock is doing well but could be convinced for the right deal). Trying to decide whether it’s a smarter move for us to buy a small house/condo in our area to house hack (and eventually rent/sell when we likely move in a few years) or continue to rent because of the very high prices in our area and invest out of state. I’d like to start with buying/managing our own residence and branch out investing in others from there but my fear is that we’ll be tying up all of our capital and won’t be able to start investing in other properties for a while. What would you do in our shoes?