New member introduction from Southern California

[Jason Schaefer]

Hello BP!

My name is Jason and I finally decided to do it. This is my first post on this incredible website and I know there will be thousands of more posts to come as I’m hooked!

For the past year I’ve been intrigued about REI but wasn’t sure where to start and what to do and then 9 months ago I stumbled upon this unbelievable site. I immediately joined and started reading the forums, listening to the podcasts (my favorite is the naked grandma podcast), setup my keywords alerts, and absorbing all the information possible. I’m in the process of building a team but it is far from complete and I now feel that REI isn’t a foreign language anymore.

I just recently got married to my best friend and beautiful wife Julia, who is also hooked on BP. In fact we have friendly competitions on who has learned the most from the website.

Since we live in Southern California, our investment strategy is to purchase distressed properties and fix them up for a buy and hold investment. Appreciation is nice but our ultimate goal is cash flow. This strategy has been impossible so far as there are so many buy and flip investors in our area that we are strongly considering purchasing turnkey properties out of state. We both know this isn’t the recommended practice for newbies but the few properties we have found in So Cal are yielding a whopping 1.1- 1.5% cash on cash. No thanks!

Hopefully we can network with the brilliant minds on this site and we can finally purchase our first investment property!

Thanks,

Jason

[Jason Schaefer]

Hi @Marco Santarelli

Thanks for the welcome. I couldn't agree with you more on buying in a market that makes sense. I'm still going to keep my eyes open in So Cal for the 1% chance that something does come up but I've shifted my attention and research to finding a market that make sense based on crime rates, unemployment rates, job growth, etc.

Your rule #7 makes common sense but I hadn't though about incorporating that into my overall strategy. Thanks for the link and your help.