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Updated 10 months ago on . Most recent reply
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Any advice/tips for a real estate newbie that is starting out in Bay Area, CA?
Hi everyone! Newbie here to the real estate investing world, but really eager to get my feet wet.
I currently live in San Jose, but am deciding to move to a cheaper location where I can get my first property. As much as I would like to stay around my hometown, houses here are not cheap. I am thinking about moving out to Sacramento, as I see some duplex’s around 500-700k range.
I'm planning on house hacking my first property, which would be a multifamily, and build a portfolio of multi-families within the Sacramento area. Planning to buy a new property every 1-2 years and repeating the house hacking strategy until I have enough capital/experience to start the BRRR strategy.
For the investors that are in Sacramento/Bay Area, I would love to hear about your stories of how you first got into real estate investing. As you can tell, this is a very big step for me and is quite nerve racking trying to make my first purchase as smooth as possible. I would appreciate any tips/advice/books that you can provide me to help jumpstart my real estate journey!
Most Popular Reply
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Hi Scott, I completely agree that the prices in California such as San Jose has completely sky rocketed, which makes it impossible for me to get my foot into the door comfortably. The main reason I chose Sacramento is because I could find a nice duplex/triplex for a portion of the price of a SFH over in San Jose. Also because my partner and I have family here, so we do not want to venture too far for our first property.
We want to start off house hacking to reduce our living expenses, but specifically looking for properties that will cash flow once we move out of that unit. We're currently saving up enough for a 20% down for a conventional loan to bypass having to pay for PMI and MIP, as these 2 additional monthly expenses are a "make it or break it", in finding a cash flowing property in California.
I would love to know what your story was like when you first started your real estate investing journey!