Hello from the SF Bay

[Brandon Foken]

Howdy all,

My name is Brandon and I'm somewhat new around these parts hailing from the Bay Area. I'm 27 and no longer a recent grad. I've been doing the 7 - 4 thing (9 to 5 is so old school) for the last 4 or 5 years since I graduated from college (GO Ducks!). Sold mortgages in Seattle at the very height of the market (July '07) and now have moved on to selling enterprise data storage for a Fortune500 company in the San Francisco Bay area. While in school, I interned at a small property management/investing company in Eugene and that really opened my eyes to Real Estate Investing and knew it was always something I wanted to do. Life got in the way for a bit, but not I'm back at it and have set two goals for myself: #1 buy a multifamily investment property by the time I'm 30 and #2 quit my day job and focus on REI full-time by 35.

To further those goals, I've started voraciously reading as much about REI as I can fit in during the day. I recently finished Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller and I'm currently reading Building Wealth One House at a Time by John W. Schaub. Next up is Investing in Real Estate by Gary Eldred. In addition, CCSF offers a 18-credit real estate certificate program that I'm looking in to as a way to get more formalized education. This looks to be geared somewhat more to a Agent, but there are enough courses for everyone depending on their interests.

Being that I'm in the Bay, property is significantly higher here than in many other places in the country making SFH rentals practically unfeasible. As of today (and my criteria is nowhere close to being locked down), I'm targeting the Oakland/Berkeley areas for a 2 - 4 unit MFH property. My main focus currently is continuing to get a solid foundation and understanding of the fundamentals while networking with fellow investors in the area.

I've been lurking for a few weeks so just wanted to take some time to say hello and thanks for all the excellent topics I've read through thus far.