Hello from San Jose, CA!

[Tom Goodwin]

Hi Everyone!

I'm excited to learn from everyone here.

I'm originally from Michigan (Detroit area), but have lived in 8 states, and have called the Bay Area home for 3 years now.

My wife is amazing. She bought her first house at something like 22yo, lives frugally, prefers to have roommates and other arrangements in order to have zero rent, and is ok with living in C areas as necessary.

She has followed a trade up philosophy with her primary residences over the years (which has brought now brought us to San Jose), and used an extra cash on hand (after reserves) to further her real estate goals. She bought one house has a designated rental, but after that, every other house was bought with the intent of living it in as a primary residence (either at the time of purchase, or in the future). We also tend to prefer to rent out individual rooms (versus entire houses) in the she owns. As such, we have some decent volume of experience on the landlord/tenant front. She got her CAreal estate license along the way to give her access to MLS, access to homes for sale as she wants, and to save on commissions.

She/We don't flip per se, but (with only one exception) typically buy houses with opportunities for improvements, and then improve them while we/renters live in them, and then sell them a few years later.

I am lucky enough to have married into a mini-RE mogul ;-)

I call myself a reformed lawyer. Back in the day I did M&A/venture capital law, but got laid off during the 2009 recession, and got out of law as fast as I could. I am not actively licensed in CA, but I use my ability to analyze regulation/laws to help with our current tiny RE portfolio.

Our short term goal (2018) is to take the profits from a rental that we currently own in Sacramento (and that we plan to sell in early 2018), to buy a multi-family unit in San Jose or elsewhere in the South Bay (most likely duplex, but looking at tri- and four-plexes). We will live in one unit, rent out the others.

Longer term:

(1) I'd love to look into other real estate investment opportunities (not to eager to buy OOS, but ok with driveable places to use like Sac, Stockton, etc.). So, I hope to be a sponge here and learn all that I can. I would love to also figure out commercial RE. I hope to see if I can put my law background to use, if I can.

(2) We currently have an infant, and I'm not super keen on paying for private school. But, we are tied to living in the South Bay for family reasons. Currently we live in downtown San Jose. Great, fun area, but many are the public schools crappy. So, we are looking to find a place in the South Bay with a least OK schools that we can move to by the time our kid is in elementary school. That may mean liquidating/refi-ing some of our other RE to pull out the funds to do that.

-Tom