Investing in the San Francisco Bay Area and looking beyond

[Ricardo Fainsilber]

I'm a new member. I have been investing in the San Francisco Bay area for a few years, I would love to continue building my portfolio there, but good deals are hard to come by now. The numbers are too high and the returns not so great. I'm interested in diversifying into multi-family residential in more affordable markets that offer good returns. Also, as foreign investor, financing is more restricted, but depending on cash flow alone to buy cash is too slow a strategy. Suggestions?

[Jason Hsiao]

Double dagger straight to the point @Arlen Chou!! We have divested a lot of our holdings in Texas bc of the property tax rate and vacancy kills. We used to live in Texas and got them via foreclosure and got some favorable assessed value. We're switching now to partnering instead of owning and managing directly ourselves. In short, we work with our CPA and lawyer to hold everything in LLC's to lower personal tax liability, do the best we can within the boundary of the rules to have income qualify as passive, try to offset with book losses if we can, and 1031 when possible.

I'm more than happy to share offline... I dunno how much I can share here without people taking it as actual legal advice and get me or my guys in trouble.