Greetings! New to BP - Live in San Diego

[RM Smith]

Greetings BiggerPockets Community.

My name is Ryan Smith and my wife, Melanie and I relocated back toSan Diego from Denver, Co in June 2016. After living a few cities, we realized San Diego was the best fit for us because like many others, we love the weather here. It’s expensive but we figure live where you want to live and figure out the rest. Life is short.

Like all of you, we love rental properties for many reasons including it’s a tangible asset, everyone needs a place to live, it generates passive income so you can reach financial freedom and it’s a proven business model over thousands of years.

All that being said, we have limited experience with real estate investing but have been involved with a few real estate investments including the purchase of two vacation rentals, a small office condominium and invested in a syndication outside the U.S.  We actually sold one of the vacation rentals last year due to new regulations.

Our goal moving forward is to invest in a mix of SFRs and multi-family homes so we can reach our real estate investing goals over the next 10 years. Our preference would be to invest locally so we have more control and can save money by managing the properties ourselves, at least to start. Are people bullish on any areas of the San Diego market over the next 10 years? Alternatively, can anyone recommend any other markets they’re bullish on? At this point, we’re really trying to figure out the best market to invest in so we can start looking for properties. Any input on how we should approach this would be appreciated. Obviously, trying to minimize costly mistakes. 

Thank you in advance for your feedback and I look forward to connecting with other members!