New member from Humboldt County, CA

[James Wills]

Hi,

I ran across this site a week ago while doing some research on REI one night after playing cashflow. I read the "The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing" and got a lot from it, thanks for that.

Since then I've read several articles here and listened to several pod casts, very impressive.

Anyways, My wife and I made a commitment to living debt free awhile ago (Should be out next year), and we believe REI is the key to our retirement goals.

My concerns about REI in our area is that we have much of the cost of California, but not much in the way of industry/jobs/pay. Also, it was recently reported that 1 in 7 rentals are turned into grow (Marijuana) houses here. Growth is stunted here for a variety of reasons so most homes are very old.

I am concerned about putting away 50-100k for a down on a quadplex for a first time investment when other areas seem to have much cheaper housing allowing for equity to be started much sooner and subsequent properties purchased faster. Based upon my research so far, getting a decent property to cashflow would likely require an even more significant down.

My wife and I are considering Idaho and plan to make a few trip there over the next few years to see if it would work for us. I understand it's not recommended for beginners to purchase out of the area so I prefer to get advice and do my homework first.

Sorry for the long intro, I have a lot of thought going into this :)