Military Real Estate Investors

[Conor Shea]

Hi everyone,

I am a young, 23 years old, military officer looking to begin investing in real estate. I am stationed in San Diego where the house prices seem to be crazy expensive unless you want to live east, outside the city. I am looking at buying a 4 unit multifamily property where I can live in one of the units and rent the other ones out. Financially, I would be able to use the VA loan for this property and the military BAH is ~$2500/month for the area. I've been doing a lot of research on the area and about rental property investing as a whole. Does anyone have advice on starting out with this type of property? Or being in the military and doing RE investing at the same time?

Any advice is appreciated, thanks!

[Donald E Appleberry]

@Conor Shea

Hey man!

Full disclosure I'm a real estate agent in San Diego. Prior Recon Marine that fell in love with REI more than guns. So I made it my full time career. Haha.

I know both the guys above and they’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head!

There are a lot of strategies when using the VA loan to invest, but typically the only one that will give you a positive cashflow off the bat is "House Hacking" a SFR and renting out the rooms to some buddies or people you don't mind living with. AirBnb as well but with current limitations that's in the air.

Other than that, San Diego is a long play and immediate cash flowing investments are very rare and 99% of the time are a value add situation. (Fixer, zoned lot able to build more units, ect)

I’d caution you on going with a 4plex if this is your first Multifamily property. Reason being is if you start having problems in one unit that’s kitchen/bath/electrical odds are the other three are going to start having similar issues. Not always the case of course, but unless you have a fair amount of capital set aside Id look for a duplex or 2 on 1. Just my opinion.

If you’re on the Navy base I’m very pro West Chula Vista. I think that’s the best area to invest for long term gains since there’s so much going on there for future developments. $1B resort, condos, restaurants ect will finally give a good reason to live in the area and prices will reflect.

@Maxwell is THE guy for the metro area, so if you’re looking for info there he’s your guy for sure.

@David Pere has a great community that can help with your VA investing planning and strategy, and Dave puts out a lot of good information.

And of course you can reach out if you have any questions. VA investing is my entire business focus and I've helped and am helping Active duty guys do this currently. I'm glad you're using the VA loan to set yourself up for the future! Especially in a market that without it, would be very difficult to break into. Cheers and best of luck.