Where to invest?

[Sarina Sutanthavibul]

I live in Whatcom County WA in the city of Everson, WA where median house prices are about $530,000. It use to be cheap here but now with soaring house prices and low median wages home ownership is not sustainable. Seattle WA is a two hour drive from me, where the median mortgage is over $3k. These are current averages just off the top of my head from my research. Maybe getting in this market is too expensive for me? My parents live in Spokane so I was going to look in that area because it’s cheaper. Also looking in Michigan because it’s more affordable,my sister lives there. Ultimately I would to have the chance to be an wholesaler. My income is small but I have a about $50k to get started. ISO mentorship and all advice. I’m really thinking that pre-foreclosures is where I need to be searching but any guidance is appreciated. I am no longer a property manager, I’m recovering from a car accident and just trying to get on my feet again. Before my accident I paid for Realestate online course. Anyways thank you for listening and I’m super excited to be here. I need to focus on a specific area( city, state)and go from there just trying to be mindful of my low budget.

[Brad S.]

In general, usually markets with good appreciation potential don't cash flow well and markets with good cash flow don't always appreciate as much or as fast. Simple explanation is: more people generally want to live in certain areas and are willing to pay more to live there, which increases demand. And if demand increases faster than supply in those areas, prices appreciate. And they usually don't go down as much in downturns either, because as the prices soften in those "desirable" areas, people start flocking back to buy properties in those desirable areas, as they become more affordable, which props up the demand again.

So, in thinking about your goals with real estate investing, I would take into account where you want to end up 5, 10, 15+ years from now. Envision yourself at a time in the future and your looking over your investments - Where do you want to see your investments? Do you want to look at your properties on the spreadsheet and see $100k's of appreciation or $1k's of monthly net cash flow or some combination of both, etc. And all the things that come with either. Like, if you have a lot of appreciation, you can then "play" with the money, by pulling out equity and buy more rentals or sell and 1031 exchange into different area/s or property types, or sell some properties and pay off others to increase your net cash flow, etc. Or you can look at your cash flow and decide to stop working your regular job, etc. Then you back up into today and evaluated which strategy/ies give you the best chance of getting where you want to be tomorrow.

I have invested in both cash flow and appreciation markets and if I were to start over again, I would more heavily be in the appreciation markets. That would've got me to where I wanted to be much faster and greater. And that's done by first researching areas (states, cities, etc) where population is growing, then you can delve into other metrics. 

Food for thought
Example, my 1st 2 properties cost very little to get and cash flowed, only for me to lose money one 1 and break even on the other 17 years after I purchased them. So, contrary to what many people say, real estate does not always go up over time, unless you have an unlimited time horizon.