San Diego, California Market

[Christian Johnston]

A bit about me: 

I have had a ridiculous amount of reading time on the current deployment I am on. Thanks to a friend, I began reading about real estate and financial literacy. Due to the bigger pockets podcasts and a number of books, I have decided to house hack. The problem is that for the last 2 months I have not been able to find a 2-4 unit property in the San Diego market that works. I have reviewed over 100 MLS listings and they all seemingly produce a hefty negative cash flow (I am crunching the numbers as if I was not living there). Does anyone have advice? Thank you so much for your time!

[Adit S.]

@Christian Johnston hope you're staying safe on deployment, Godspeed and get home safe.

It was after my last deployment that I was in the same boat as you (no pun intended if you're in the Navy). Unfortunately, it's near impossible to make numbers work on a house hack for multifamily in San Diego. Im assuming you're using your VA loan? My suggestion to you is get into a Single Family/Condo with 2 or more rooms and rent them out to your buddies. I did that and covered most of my mortgage initially and later on started cash flowing a little.

If you're a first time home buyer PLEASE don't sign a buyer/broker agreement with any realtor until you've checked their reviews or preferably have a recommendation from someone you know(there are plenty of sleezy realtors in town that will flock to you like vultures and handle your transaction like poop, especially once they hear military/ if you need a recommendation let me know) 

Get on @David Pere facebook page, it's called From Military to Millionaire. It's a page designed for us Veterans to get our questions answered and bounce ideas off of each other. You'll find one of the most valuable resources for the VA loan there as well, Chris Griffin and his page VettedVA.

I'm giving you all of the tools that will help you avoid making the same mistakes I did and get you the best deals and best rates.

Feel free to shoot me a message if anything comes up.