CA New/Learning Investor, Can you share some wisdom?

[Gary F.]

Aloha Bigger Pockets Colleagues. 

My name is Gary. I'm just starting out in this wonderful world of REI. I just took out a HELOC and would like to start. I've zero experience in this and would like to hear from anyone willing to share some wisdom.

I'm in the Bay Area of CA, which many of you know, is extremely expensive for RE with many wealthy dot.commers. being that its Silicon Valley.  That's great, only I'm definitely not a Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates and make only 1/10000000th of their salary. 

I was looking into buy and hold for rental, flipping (though the rehab process may stress me out too much), or crowdfunding (though I'm not an accredited financial investor, which is required for those online sites), or other options. 

I was looking into the Central Valley of CA, possibly near a university for student tenants. Or section 8 tenants (pros/cons?). 

Can anyone share some wisdom?  Mahalo.

Gary

[Account Closed]

Don't touch the HELOC money. To the man with HELOC funds and without a plan everything will look like an investment opportunity. First decide what you want to do. Rehab resales are not anything like buy and holds. And investing in notes and crowd funding isn't anything like buying RE.

Plenty of reading here on BP on all of it.  Only you can decide what suits your personality and time/energy/resources.