Kevin from San Diego!

[Kevin Longeuay]

Hi everyone!

My name is Kevin and I just joined the site! I'm an aerospace engineer in San Diego and my real estate goal is purchase and maintain rental properties to increase my monthly cashflow. Sound familiar? I'm sure you guys get that a lot. I don't have any properties yet but I've been doing some research and have been finding that good ol Cali might not be the best place for me to start out. I'm looking for investment properties around 100k with the highest ROI possible. Not easy to find properties that cheap in Cali and it doesnt seem like the ROI is as good as other states. One questions for you all to start things off, is it a good idea for a new real estate investor to start with a property that is out of state? I plan on hiring a property manager for whatever property I start with (in state or out of state).

Also, my current research strategy is to start by finding cities that have good potentials for real estate. My approach is to look at two measures of performance: 1) annual ROI (average yearly rent for 3bd minus mortgage then divide by 20% down for avg 3bd purchase price) and 2) market rental demand which I'm calculating as # of rental listing / city population. If a city has a good average ROI and a high market demand, I would then look further at that city. Thoughts?

Btw, kudos to the creator of this site. I've been looking for a good real estate forum and stumbled upon this one which is very user friendly and has a large focus (if not all) on real estate investing. Great intro video as well. 

Cheers!