Start Real Estate Investing from a Duplex/Fourplex in Bay Area

[Nuo Shi]

Hi everyone,

I'm a Rookie to this real estate investing. Glad to know this forum to get the opportunity to learn from a lot of experienced investors. Currently, I'm thinking about to start with a duplex/fourplex in bay area. My agent provided me some historical data for past 10 years and I analyzed the per SF price trend shown as below.

1. I noticed there is only limited transaction data for du/fourplex, so this might not be representative. Let me know if anyone has a better insights. It looks to me the price has dropped since the 2018 peak.

2. My strategy is to buy-hold-rent for long term (at least 5 - 10 years), so what is the conservative appreciation rate I can expect in next 5 years? From reading some analysis articles, it looks like we are in the peak of the current cycle after 2008, so I kind of not expecting a high appreciation in 1-2 years; but for long term, maybe this is still a good investment? 

3. I tend to pick a good location with good school to decrease the vacancy and try to be recession proof. Those currently are expensive with almost impossible cash flow. As for my zero experience case, a foreclosure sale sounds risky and a property with huge improvement also sounds unrealistic. Does that mean I rarely have any chance to get a deal under market value?

4. I'm curious in this SIP state, does anyone know what is the rental vacancy rate in Bay area? If people tend to move out of the central, will this affect the rental market largely?

 I'd love to hear any perspectives. 

Thank you in advance,

Nuo