Experienced Investor in SF Bay Area & Seattle

[Shane Pearlman]

Hi folks,

My wife and I have been investing since 2007 and currently own 10 doors. We are mostly buy and hold investors, although I have been through a couple 1031s in the past 12 months to reposition profits from the latest upswing. My family and I live in Capitola, CA (Santa Cruz County / San Francisco Bay Area) and started by investing locally, doing rehabs on forclosed SFRs. We managed the properties ourselves. Julie has a strategy which she calls "Renter Chic", which has converted to (mostly) strong, self-managed and stable tenants. We then acquired a couple duplexes, and then last year, did our first out-of-town deal buying a fourplex in Seattle. We are currently looking for an apartment building to acquire in Seattle.

We achieved our first real estate goal this year, as our properties throw off sufficient cashflow that my wife can comfortably stay home with our newborn son and older daughter. In addition to real estate investing, I have been a partner for the last 14 years in a software company (modern tribe: http://tri.be) which builds large scale websites and apps for fortune 500 companies / government institutions. My wife and I have both run multiple businesses.

We started in real estate as window shoppers. A buddy pointed out in 2001 that billionaires open up their homes for you to gawk at for free, if you can just read the open house schedule. We used to pack a bottle of wine, a picnic and go mansion sight seeing. It was huge fun.

As soon as our son gets old enough, we plan to move to a spanish speaking country and I'm seriously fascinated with the idea of acquiring a boutique B&B in front of a solid all around surf wave.

I joined as I'm looking for some good property leads, and some buddies to share war stories (and go surfing with if you happen to be local).

[Darren Sager]

Welcome to BP @Shane Pearlman  ! Thanks for taking the time to introduce yourself.  I think that's a great goal owning a boutique B&B!   And now that you're here we'd love to see you be an active member of the BP community so be sure to set up Keywords Alerts for your local area such as "Capitola" or "San Francisco" if you're looking to find potential opportunities for investing, education in a subject, or other members in your area.

Use the Find Members area to network with other members who are local to you or are in an area you're wanting to invest in. Podcasts come out weekly and are great way to learn on the move. I find there's always a gold nuggets of information in each one and I go back to listen to a number of them multiple times.

If you want to find events that are going on in your area be sure to check out the Real Estate Events and Happenings area of BiggerPockets. Here you can find meet ups of local BP members or other groups that get together, network, and have education about real estate investing. Some of these events they might try to sell you into a mentoring program or try to sell you something else. In most cases you'll find everything you need here on BP so don't spend any extra money elsewhere. There are many great members here on BP who are tremendous resources of information and will help you greatly. And there are some who are just here to try to sell you something so don't be naive to it. Their true intentions come out eventually.

Be sure to read through the rules of the forums here. How you'll get the most out of BiggerPockets is to understand how to navigate through it and understand that it's a two way street. You'll get out of it what you put into it so become active and help us grow the community and wealth of knowledge that's already here.

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And lastly I highly recommend becoming a Plus or Pro member of the site and take advantage of all that BP has to offer you. It's like getting the keys to the kingdom. It will be one of the best investments you'll make when it comes your real estate investing.

Again welcome to Bigger Pockets!