New to Real Estate - Central Coast of CA

[Tom Squire]

Hello Bigger Pockets!

I was turned on to the podcast and am hooked. I have listened to about 12-14 shows in the past two weeks starting at show 1 and working my way in. I just purchased my first 2 bedroom condo in Oceano (one of the cheaper areas around San Luis Obispo, and right near Pismo Beach) (before getting into bigger pockets) and while a great place to live, not a great short term investment. But its a place I can call my own.  I have a degree in business and currently work in online advertising.

I figure this would be a good place to take a crack at sharing my rei plan. This is my first stab at writing it on 'paper' and I'd love to hear some feedback.  Ideally I'd like to dive in by flipping to get a better sense of renovating property and understanding what I can do to add value and what renovations get the most bang for the buck.  A couple issues with this are that I am likely priced out of my immediate area with SFHs in the 300-700 range.  Im pretty sure with my current mortgage my likelyhood of securing another conventional loan is going to be pretty hard to do.  I might be able to secure some private money but again it will be difficult with no track record. 

Eventually id like to get into multi family properties that cashflow.  I listened to the webinar about how to figure how many rental properties I would need to generate enough cash flow to replace my income.  That is a lot of properties but with some creative financing and a few years hopefully I'll be able to get there.  This would be a buy and hold strategy. Perhaps I should find a few people to partner with to get some property and experience under my belt. 

Any tips or direction on where to start would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to getting involved in the community!

Keywords alerts for Central Coast Locals to chime in :) SLO, Central Coast, Paso Robles, Bakersfield, Santa Maria, Pismo.

[Joe Fairless]

@Tom Squirewelcome to BP. And the keywords at the bottom of your post made me smile after reading your full-time job is in online advertising. What a pro. :) 

Your approach of fixing and flipping then taking a portion of the proceeds to buy cash flowing properties makes sense. It's also been done before so that's a good thing for you. Sounds like it's just ironing out some of the challenges you mentioned above.