Howdy! New Member from sunny Bay Area, CA

[Henry Liu]

Hi Bigger Pockets community,

I discovered Bigger Pockets podcast for about a month now and I am listening to them religiously. I am currently on show #73 (very good episode so far).  

I have very little actual Real Estate experience. In the pass, I only shadowed a Real Estate Agent for a few week to help out some open houses and showings. I call it quits because at the time I needed a steady paycheck.

Now I want to try my hand into real estate investing!

The areas I want to focus on are San Jose, Milpitas, Union City, and Hayward.

Here is my plan! Any helpful advice will be welcomed. 

1. 1) Research and Learn your area
   • Go to 100 open house/visits in Bay Area, CA (Feb 2016-Sept 2016)
   • Learn to find deals
   • Go to meetups/real estate groups
   • Read 3 real estate books
2. 2) Analyze Real Estate deals
   • Find our strategy in my areas
3. 3) Manage our finance
   • Defining our cash flow
   • Manage  down payment
   • VA loan maybe?
   • Find the best institution for me
4. 4) Find an Agent
   • Specialist foreclosures
   • Work with investor
5. 5) Find a contractor
   • Honest
6. 6) Create legal documents for landlord
   • I have no idea etc?
   • Landlord agreement?
   • Evictions?
7. 7) Find a property manager
8. 8) A lot of I don't knows

Thanks for the help all!

Hobbies: martial arts, movies, and talk about how I want to be a real estate investor.

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @Henry Liu:

1. • Manage  down payment
   • VA loan maybe?

 Welcome.

If you're going to need to use rental income to qualify and can't support the mortgage (on paper) with zero tenants, start thinking of a way to check this box:

http://imgur.com/Ht6UrwO

Working part time for some property management company on the weekends for a while could do it.

If you don't want to check that box, or can't, and need that rental income on paper to qualify, it'll have to be FHA 3.5% down and then refinance a little down the road (owner occupying that multi unit and being landlord of the other units will check the box, 'chicken or the egg' fashion) into VA. That'll be another set of closing costs. Most investor types focus on cash flow and not one-time expenses, but it's still worth mentioning.

Note that you can have multiple VA loans at once depending on a few things, but for the most part only one FHA loan at at a time. So in theory two VA loans and one FHA, simultaneously, is possible. You can theoretically bounce around owner occupying for 12 months each, with high LTVs, and without such an immediate need to gain enough equity to refinance into conventional, a lot more as a fellow veteran than most people can.