New Investor from Orange County, CA

[James Griffin]

Hello everyone! I'm James Griffin and even though I've had an account here for a while, I haven't gotten around to actually posting anything. So I figured that I might as well start now and dive in! 

A little bit about myself - I am 25 years old and a recent graduate from UC Irvine with a degree in Computer Science. Luckily for me, I was able to graduate debt free and land a software development job at a pretty big sized company in Costa Mesa right after I finished university. 

But what I am really looking for from these forums right now are ideas about what to do that would give me some outside perspective on my current situation. To put it bluntly, my aunt tragically passed away and left a bit of money and a house for me - around $600,000 and also a house with around $300,000 in equity. Currently, I am living in the back house in the property and renting out the front house which covers the mortgage+utilities+insurance. I basically get to live rent free while my $80k in income pretty much goes straight to the bank. The house isn't really cash flowing, more barely breaking even, but it fits for my current life situation.

I felt like this would be too much money to just leave in the bank so I figured I could expand my real estate portfolio and start building wealth! Right now, I have a plan to finance another house (~$450,000 range) and move closer to my work. Thank God I kept a good Credit score! It's currently around 830. But right now it's an hour drive in gridlock traffic from Long Beach and I'm kinda tired of living in a tiny flat where I eat and sleep in the same place. So I've been passively looking at SFH properties around Santa Ana area where I could bike to work and rent out a room to help mitigate the mortgage cost.

What do you guys think? Is this a good plan? Given my situation, what would you try to do? I just don't want to squander this opportunity and just waste it. Any advice would be great! And I look forward to getting to know all of you!