Newbie Looking to Invest in SoCal

[Victor Zeytin]

Hi everyone. This is my first post here and I've been spending the day reading through the posts.

I'm a small business owner that's looking to invest in MF in SoCal. As many of you know, SoCal is an extremely competitive (overheated?) market with very low cap rates.

I've placed offers on no less than 3 properties so far with a partner in the San Fernando Valley area with the goal of developing MF properties. My partner has developed a 20 unit beautiful low-rise in the valley. We've missed out on all so far by being outbid by other investors. Other properties we've missed out on because they were sold right before we go to them. It's a bit dispiriting when you have cash on hand and are looking for a reasonable return for your money and can't find anything. We're shooting for a few 7-8% cap rate after development of a property which I don't think is un-reasonable. The target property is a 20-35 unit 2-3 story low rise property. Something that's neat and manageable.

One of the issues I think is that I can't commit a huge amount of time to this because it would take away from my current (non-related) business.

What would you guys recommend for investors in my situation? I'm sure there are a lot of people on the same boat and I'd love to hear what you have to say.