Newbie from San Diego, CA

[Brett Wolk]

Hi all,

I'm getting into real estate investing at the age of 26 after graduating from UCSD with a major in Economics. I worked as an Accountant for a little bit, then decided that I really hated waking up at 6 AM every day to go sit down for 10 hours. After quitting that, I went back to community college to study music, and I'm halfway through the program now. it's been a lot of fun, but now of course I must seriously consider my financial future if I want to continue with a music career.

The good news is that I have a significant amount of change to invest in thanks to a fortunate family situation. As I was pondering what to do with this money late one night, I googled "Investment Blogs," then found an article titled "8 Best Investment Blogs for Millennials;" on that list was Invest Four More, and from there I found BiggerPockets!!

So I've been reading everything I can overthe past couple weeks - and I know that's a paltry amount of time - but I'm very eager to buy my first property and get started on my goal!

The goal I came up with was to buy 6 properties for $150,000 each, with $50,000 down on each, each renting for $2,000/month. Does anyone think finding such deals is feasible? I ran the numbers, being sure to expense 50% of rent, and saw that the cash flow would pay them all off in 15 years and leave me with a nice passive income. Just the ticket

However I know the path to getting there isn't so straightforward. The step I'm stuck on right now is deciding on a market, as San Diego isn't good for rental investments. I'd like to invest out of state because I've heard finding properties that abide to the 2% rule is much more likely, but I'm open to in-state if good deals can be found...

To help me decide on a market, I am asking Google for lots of help. So far I've really dug this article: Forbes Top 20 Best Cities to Invest in Real Estate in 2015...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2015/01/09...

And this RealtyTrac research:

http://www.realtytrac.com/news/real-estate-investi...

But I'm not sure how accurate these articles are? In any case, I figured I'd take a look at Craigslist rents in these cities and try to cross-reference them with their Zillow values in order to figure out if these cities would have houses that would meet my criteria.  I haven't done this yet, but am going to do this tomorrow if you guys think this is a good idea.

My next step will be connecting with a Realtor, or another investor who's skilled at finding deals, and partnering with them. 

All-in-all, I'm excited to be starting this new adventure, and look forward to facing the challenges and triumphs ahead.

Thanks for reading, and see you on the forums!

[Aaron Norris]

HI Brett, you're lucky as you're in an area with great investments clubs that have good networking an wonderful people. See SDCIA, NSDREI, and San Diego FIBI.  Whichever is closest.  You'll meet investor friendly people from all trades. 

California is much harder to find that 2% rule and I'll be interested to see what you come up with where the buying power is so strong and the rents are that strong and consistent. I REALLY like being able to drive by my rentals but open if the team was in place. I know there are several investor services that help that but I just get concerned they over-saturate markets and I've seen people get burned. Just be careful going out of state, especially being new.

I too used to be in the arts professionally. Don't take enough time to play any more, but real estate will help make that a possibility. I was never into the whole starving artist thing.

Welcome to BP.