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!