New Investor from Orange County/North San Diego

[Michael Tran]

Hello BP community. I'm a new investor from Orange County/North San Diego, California. I've been educating myself about real estate investing for the past year through the BP podcast, real estate investing books and research online. I'm finally diving in to this great community to meet like-minded investors, to contribute to discussions and to get started on my REI goals.

I'd like to focus my investing strategy on buy-and-hold while still working my full-time job.  The goal is to build enough passive income to replace my earned wage income and then to "retire" - hopefully within 10 years.  With that in mind, I am happy to learn the ins and outs of buy and hold investing, but would like to do so without having to spend too much time on property management or rehabbing.  The idea is to scale my number of passive income assets rather than to get the best possible cash flow per asset.

The majority view seems to be that CA does not offer many opportunities for cash flow unless you spend a lot of time locating such properties and putting in the sweat equity to make distressed/C Class properties cash flow.

Here are some details about my current (rough) buy-and-hold strategy:

1. My tentative criteria: Class A/B properties in the $100-$200k purchase price range, close to turn-key, buy at 20% down with a cash flow of ~$300/month (taking into account hiring property management). 

2. My current goal/plan: Buy 1 unit in Year 1, 2 units in Year 2, 3 units in Year 3 and so on, using the cash flow to reinvest into further acquisitions.  The plan is to "retire" from my full-time job when my passive income is at $15,000/month.

3. Invest in a market with the potential to offer future adaptations to my strategy (multi-family, commercial retail, etc.).  Build a team on the ground (agent, property manager, contractor, accountant, attorney and co-investors) dialed in to such market.

I would really appreciate learning in particular what markets have worked for CA resident investors looking for similar numbers, whether in-state or out-of-state.

If there are any local REI meetings happening any time soon in the OC/SD areas, please let me know!

Thanks for reading and hope to be of help to you all in the future.

Best,
Michael