Real Estate Newbie in LA Looking for Direction

[Geo Tan]

Hello!

I have just recently started to look into real estate investing and am learning as much as I can. Let me explain the situation I am currently in and hopefully anyone here can help me with any advice they can offer which is greatly appreciated!

**The next 3 paragraphs will explain how I got to where I am today in terms of getting started on real estate investing. If this does not interest you, please feel free to skip the next 3 paragraphs!**

I was fortunate enough to have my father purchase a two bedroom condo in Las Vegas with both our names. I wasn't really hands on with that unit since we had a property manager do the heavy lifting. I just recently was able to sell that property for roughly $200k. I am currently in the contract signing process but I would like to do a 1031 to use this profit to dive into the world of real estate investing. I currently live in LA (Ktown) and have been learning as much as I can through Bigger Pockets and any other resource I can get my hands on.

I would like to start with a buy and hold approach and make some income from renting the units out. I have a full time job currently so I'm not in dire need of income. Through the little information I have learned so far I set my goal as "Earn a steady $2,000 per month of steady income through multi unit properties (duplex, triplex, quadruplex) in LA by June 30th". I know how ridiculous that sounds but I was lacking a lot of researching and learning at that point so that was what got me started.

After some more research I learned that it was extremely difficult to make profits through rent in LA. The more I researched, the more I realized that the 2% or 1% rule cannot work with most of the properties. If anything I was lucky to find a few that would meet the 0.5% rule (if that exists). So now I have expanded my search area to the greater Los Angeles area.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long story. I hope that will answer any questions any of you might have in terms of the history behind where I am currently at.

So bottom line is, I have now amended my goal to "Earn $2,000 per month of profit through multi unit properties (duplex, triplex, quadruplex) in California by June 30th".

First of all, please do let me know if this is a horrible goal to start off with. I am still very green to the real estate world and have yet to fully grasp all of it yet.

Second, I will most likely start with a $200k cash for my previous property I will be selling which I will do a 1031 with to start my real estate venture. So with a loan, I'm leaning towards a spending budget of $500k - $1.2m for a property (or properties).

Well that's about as much information as I can share I think...

So any tips or guidance in terms of the direction I'm going would be greatly appreciated! Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have and I'll respond back as soon as I can. 

Thank you again and hope everyone has a great day!