CA investment home

[Kelly Monteiro]

Hello CA investors,

I’d love to pick your brain on deciding between two investment homes for a short-term rental. I’m aware California is not the best market, with the restrictions and potential new tax coming up, etc, but we have personal reasons to invest there.

With that said, we visited a lot of houses in the San Diego area and saw 2 that seem like a potential fit for us: one is a smaller 3 bedroom but a mile from the beach and the other is a 15-17min drive to the beach, but bigger with 4 bedroom and a little cheaper, which would allow us some cushion to invest on a hot tub or potential pool. This would be our first rental investment, so we’ve been learning a lot and I would love to hear thoughts from this community. Thanks once again!

[Bruce Woodruff]

You didn't mention prices or how much you will put down. Being recently from SD, I can guess that both those houses are well north of $1 mil, prob closer to $2 mil? Unless you're paying cash, your monthly motgage payments are going to be so high that it will take a big hit on your Profit and ROI, right?

I agree with the above comments that being 1 mile from the beach is the same as 15 miles. As you know, parking is a disaster anywhere in the SD beach area. [Note to @John Underwood...there are no areas that I know of where a golf cart would work (or be allowed) @Dan H.?]

If you have to stay in SD, you might want to look at a LTR instead. Just my $0.02....I would trust Dan's advice more than mine :-)