Looking to get unstuck in the SF Bay Area

[Christina Womack]

Hi everyone!

Our goals are to 1. create non-401k retirement cash flow and 2. reduce our dependency on our wage jobs over time. 

We think the right way forward for us is to buy and hold cash-flow-positive rentals, (SFR or dup/trip/quadplexes), but I'd be happy to hear other recommendations from people with experience. I don't know much at all about the pitfalls and upsides of turnkey investing, for example.

We only own the home we live in (our 2nd) but we'd like to get started on REI. We've been kind of stuck at 'we think we're ready' for a couple of years now and always seem to stall out at market selection. I have just put out a request to my broker for pre-approval, so we're on the way :)

The Bay Area is daunting cost-wise so even though markets in faraway places are less financially scary, we think it would be smart to first invest in a place we can drive to. (Are we wrong about that?)

That puts our outer limits at Sacramento to the north and Fresno to the south we think. So we'd love to chat to anyone else invested in areas around Sac, Modesto, Stockton or Fresno who might have tips and gotchas.


Appreciate any thoughts the BP community has to share on this stuff And I'd love to hear about MeetUps in the East Bay as well!