New from Bay Area California - possibly jumping deep too fast

[Eugene Wu]

Hi everyone,

Been lurking around BP for a couple weeks now, so I should probably do my intros :)

My name's Eugene, and I've been stumbling in and out of real estate via 1 property (my first apart I bought to live in, back in 2008). Since day 1, I've always sublet a room in there to offset costs, but ultimately moved out after I got married. Converted the apartment to a full time rental property, up till now, where I just got this feeling that it's likely better to sell and re-invest elsewhere than to keep it as maintenance costs are starting to rise, and the complex's neighbors are starting to degrade.

As a result, I think I'm about to get thrown into the deep end of having to do a 1031 transfer as a first play into doing RE investment, so there's some sense of urgency as well, which is not comfortable.

I'm by no means a pro, and by day I'm a full time manager at a startup, running technical sales. I'd like to continue working in the tech field, and RE to me is a supplemental cash flow, as well as a diversification of the portfolio.

The posts I've been reading in the forum, blog posts, twitter feed, podcasts have been quite encouraging, and I'm just excited to learn more from everyone here! :)