Investor from Southern Calsifornia

[Chris Latham]

Hi, My wife and I recently upgraded to to Bigger Pockets Pro.  We live in the Corona / Eastvale area of Riverside County in Southern California.  

We have bought and sold two rental properties in Arizona. We currently own four Single Family rental houses in the Desert, near Desert Hot Springs, in California and two in Idaho near Boise / Caldwell. We are renovating the Idaho house now to be ready for August 1st move-in.  

We were also unintentional landlords, in 2011, when were not able to sell our primary residence in California that we had owned for 10 years. We now have a new smaller energy efficient home in Southern California and have finally sold our previous home after having it leased for three years. 

We also did a 1031 exchange on one of our Arizona houses to buy one of the California desert houses. We also fixed and flipped one house in the desert to pay for our two rental houses in Idaho.  It was a 9 month project.

We are currently living off our rental income and fix-and-flip income full time.  But this was not intentional.  I am currently unemployed and not by choice. After 21 years at the same profession, I was laid off last February.  

It is a good thing that we have the rental income to fall back on. But we are a bit short so I need to buy more rental houses or income producing properties.  The unemployment situation pushed us to purchase the Idaho houses.  We do not qualify for a bank loan to get another rental house so we need to learn how to be creative with our loans and Real Estate purchases. It looks like Bigger Pockets will help tremendously.  We plan to increase our income so that we can retire comfortably and afford health care.

[Claire Fenton]

Welcome to PB @Chris Latham,

I live and work in Boise, Idaho and share some similar history with you with regards to owning rentals, being an unintentional landlord several times in my life and getting laid off and having to fall back on my rental income. I currently work with a residential property manager in Boise and love it. Boise is a great town and the word is getting out, which means real estate is a good investment here. Did you have a 401k with the company that laid you off? If so, I can refer you to a company that can structure real estate purchases using retirement accounts. It's very flexible and doesn't have any of the restrictions that the Self-Directed method that most people are familiar with do. Definitely worth looking into even if the balance of your IRA isn't enough to buy property outright. Good luck with building your portfolio, and if you are looking to invest in the Boise area, there are lots of great people who can help you with finding good properties.