Invest in duplex/SFR first before jumping to CRE?

[Larry Tran]

Hello BiggerPockets community!

I am a 27 year old newbie in real estate from LA and this is my first post in BiggerPockets. Most of my life I have been focused more on my career/school (9 years of college/post grad) so the world of investing is completely new, yet very exhilarating. I have been lurking around here in the forums for a month or two and have been reading books about REI for the past year (like the 10,000th person here on BP right?). I plan to jump into REI in the next year or two to gain some real experience. As of now, from researching the many different avenues of RE, CRE/larger MFR has my complete interest.

My question to everyone in this MFR forum is since I am completely new to REI, should I invest smaller in duplex/triplex first to get into the game (build portfolio/equity) before jumping into CRE as an investor (I am looking to buy outside of LA, and possibly out of state)? How did you start out in CRE?

With my partner's and my modest personal savings, we can get a traditional 750k mortgage, leveraged at about 80%. Possibly 1 mill, after another year of savings. I know its relative to pennies in the game of CRE but hopefully someone can say that it may be enough to be a small-time investor in CRE as part of a syndicate.

We aren't sure if we are even able to invest with a syndicate/sponsor at this point. Our concern is that we don't want to "use up" the liquid cash we've been saving up and be caught up in a duplex/SFR investment. We could buy and sell to build larger amounts of cash but I just want to focus in one area of investing for now (and to decrease risk). We also know that without experience, it will be difficult to find a syndicate/sponsor to take us seriously.

Since I am a newbie, please excuse any ignorance I have in my post... The learning curve is very steep in REI and I know I must start somewhere. Any advice is appreciated.

Larry

Los Angeles, CA