Trulia Software Developer, New to Real Estate Investing

[Christopher Echanique]

Hey BiggerPockets! Chris here. I'm a software engineer here in San Francisco. Working for Trulia has got me thinking a lot about real estate. The last few weeks I've been reading some books and doing research on real estate investing. I'm pretty excited to get started. The San Francisco real estate market is a little too crazy for me so I've been looking at buy-and-hold properties back home in Florida to invest in. I've been looking at mainly Orlando, though I'd consider Tampa and South Florida as well. 

I'm glad to join the BiggerPockets community and I look forward to networking with and learning from you all.

Best,

Chris

[Paul Timmins]

@Christopher Echanique

Welcome. The FL markets you mentioned are in the top 10 us markets for student housing.

Locate and attend 3 different local REIA club meetings great place to meet people gather resources and info. Here you will meet wholesalers who provide deals and rehabbers (cash buyers). Find them through Google and meetup.com

Two Great reads, I bought both J. Scott The Book on Flipping Houses, The Book on Estimating ReHab Costs http://www.biggerpockets.com/flippingbook

Consider checking out HUD homes for small multi's owner occupied gets first crack.

You might consider Niche or Specialized Housing like student housing. Rents can be 2-4 times more. Remember you don't have to own a property to control it.

Download BP’s newest book here some good due diligence in Chapter 10. Real Estate Rewind Starting over

http://www.biggerpockets.com/files/user/brandonatbp/file/real-estate-rewind-a-biggerpockets-community-book

Good Luck

Paul