New to investing in real estate, should I sell my place?

[Sarah G.]

Hi everyone!

Newbie investor here. I've been educating myself for the past few months about real estate investing through books, podcasts and bp.com of course. I've always loved real estate but like in Brandon's book my parent's were not keen on the idea so I unfortunately listened went to undergrad then went to professional school. My husband and I live in Portland, Oregon and bought a small condo there last year. Like many other young professional we thought buying a place a soon as possible would be the best thing we could do with our hard earned money. It's in an up and coming neighborhood so I did have the idea of renting it out in the future or selling it for a profit. If only I had found BP before!! While crunching the numbers, our current property would provide little if any cash flow if we did end up renting it out even if the property appreciated in value due to high HOA fees.

We've managed to save up to 50k to put into another property but can't decide which way to go. I keep going back and forth between MF and SF but the calculations don't seem to work in our favor. As Portland is a pretty saturated market (thanks portlandia) we're thinking of going elsewhere to invest, maybe vancouver. We were thinking of selling our current property and maybe getting 40-50k from that and adding it to our saved funds as this property is probably not the best to have in the long run. 

I'm trying my best not to get discouraged and fall into the group that all these podcast/books/video say talk about, the ones who just never end up doing it because of fear. It can get very daunting though and worry I would not make the right choice. I've been learning from the podcast about investing in properties in different states. Not sure if that would be a better option. Any advice or stories of hope!! Thanks