First-Time California Investor in Unique Situation; Please Advise

[Benjamin Kleven]

Hi you all,

I want to give thanks in advance; I know this is a long post, I’m really in-need of advice here, any of which would be greatly appreciated.

For some background, I’m almost 23 years old. For six months, I’ve been working a sales job in San Francisco which pays well for my age (~80k/year), and am extremely fortunate to be able to live at home with my parents in Berkeley and save on rent. Right now I have about 30k saved up (I started saving in college). In a year I’m estimating I’ll have around 65. In 2 years I should be making well into the six-figures, although sales is very unpredictable and hard to estimate; probably somewhere in the ballpark or 110-200k. I have good credit, and thus, I’m in a pretty good position to start thinking about Real Estate. My plan is to save up and study real estate for another year or two, and then execute one of the options listed below.

The X-Factor is, my dream is to skydive a few days a week, and live near a DropZone (within 30 mins) on those days. Ideally I’d work in an office in a big city (SF or LA) Monday-Weds, and work from home Th and Fri, so I could skydive in the evenings past 5, and on weekends.

There are 3 skydiving drop zones which are open Thurs and Fri evenings, each of which are about an hour from the East Bay;

1 in Davis

1 in Byron

1 in Tracy

The other major option is Perris, an hour from LA.

For a very-brief rundown...

1. Davis is a gorgeous location, with great schools, the University, etc. Houses appear to be at least 600k+ here on average, with some very small, ugly ones listed for around 300k. It’s also 30 mins from Sacramento, which is supposedly one of the best places in the nation to invest, where houses are roughly 350k on average. However, I had a bad experience at the Dropzone in Davis, and would prefer to be closer to either Byron or Tracy

2. Byron/Tracy, I don’t know too much about, except I like the Dropzones. The locations themselves are about an hour from the Bay/Silicon Valley, but are not very appealing to non-skydivers. They don’t have much going on at all. I could see it being difficult to find renters or eventually sell whatever house I bought. House prices are lower, on average between 150-300k

3. Perris/SoCal: Perris is supposedly a decent place to invest (Came in 10th in a couple of best places to invest in CA lists). However, it’d require that I change jobs, and I really like my job and coworkers.

I know location is critical for a good investment. While I myself would love to live near Byron or Tracy, it could be extremely dumb to invest with an ulterior motive like this.

Which brings me to Real Estate.

The way I see it, my main options are:

1. Buy a house near one of these Dropzones, stay at my parents, commute to work half the week

2. Buy a house in a big city, and get some sort of mobile trailer to work from/sleep in on skydiving days

3. Use an FHA to get a house in a big city, and a conventional loan to get one out in the country near a dropzone

4. Buy a house in a big city, stay in motels in the country a couple nights a week/camp on the Dropzone (the main problem with this is I can’t realistically make sales calls from a Dropzone, hence the motel idea)

At this point, I’m sort of leaning against option 1. I think if I were to get a house in SF or LA, it’s be easy to Airbnb it out a few nights a week, and far easier to rent out an extra room/eventually sell.

Obviously, house prices in SF/LA are pretty ridiculous right now, and FHA would be my only chance for at least a few years unless I teamed up with some others. In a couple years, I might be able to buy one with a plan to refinance...

My question is

1. What would you guys do? What is the most financially feasible and potentially lucrative option for me, which would enable me to live in the country part-time and the city part-time?

Again, any advice would be great.

Thanks