Newbie from San Francisco

[Chris M.]

Hey Everyone! My name is Chris, I'm 29 and my background is a LITTLE BIT outside of Real Estate. I have been in the Information/Cyber Security world for the past 8 years. My original major prior to Computer Science was International Business. My father did acquisitions of space engineering companies all across the US and eventually in Australia. Upon growing up, I got to visit Sydney multiple times, and it sparked the fire in me to see the world. Since then, I've traveled to over 13 countries, most of the time on my own. I love Spain, Italy, and Japan the most. I've spent 2 months backpacking through Europe, and just recently did my first tour in Asia.

I don't have much of a background in Real Estate Investing. Last year, I set a goal of reading 1 book a month, (I think I only finished...maybe 4 that year?) This year, I'm on my 13th book. Here are the books that I have listened to, that have changed the direction of my life:

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad
2. Money -Tony Robbins
3. I Will Teach you to be Rich
4. Can't Hurt Me
5. The Miracle Morning
6. HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business
7. Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant
8. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
9. Think and Grow Rich
10. Mastery - Robert Greene
11. Atomic Habits
12. Talking to Strangers

Currently Reading:
Long-Distance Real Estate Investing
The Richest Man in Babylon
The Intelligent Investor
50 Real Estate Investing Calculations (Just to get to understand simple formulas I should probably be familiar with)

After attending plenty of security conferences, I learned the important of networking, so I wanted to start sooner than later! I'm very eager to learn more about real estate investing. My current goal is to increase my cashflow, as it to cover my living expenses. My "End" goals are to own property in other countries, and to not be required to have a 9-5 job. I want to have homes all over the world.

I'm original from Sacramento, California. I moved to San Francisco for college. I've lived in Atlanta for a little while as well.

I discovered this website via David M. Greene's book, and I'm really liking this website.

Some skills and things I bring to the table. My original position was a Security Researcher. I helped secure hospital networks across the US from getting hacked, managing over 30k+ devices per network, analyzing all of their vulnerabilities, and provided real-time suggestions on how to manage the risk of being hacked. I've written bots to help gather information, this is know as Data Mining. I've also dabbled in some Machine Learning projects.

In terms of Real Estate, there are some sites that provide statistics on crimes reported in California, https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/exploration/crime-statistics, and history data of housing markets in California https://www.car.org/marketdata/data/housingdata/%20
I was able to download all this data, and with some more time, (I'm pretty busy), can find some correlation and potentially some good deals. I'm pretty sure Zillow aggregates all this data and just runs ML on top of it. Some ideas I was thinking, was that even if crime rates increase, maybe they aren't technically the crime that's bad for real estate businesses. So fine-tuning which area are ACTUALLY bad for real estate investment, instead of a general scope. For me...I don't know what good deals look like, so I'd like to learn and work with others. I'm also more than happy to look in other states, and even other countries. I understand there are other data points, such as employment rates, walking scores, cost of rent in a location, etc, BUT I'm positive I can get that data too, so long as it's legally provided. Please don't contact me about anything illegal.

I hope this gives a glimpse into my life. Other abilities and skills, I can program pretty much anything. Notifications, alerts, etc, I can do all that. And of course, if I'm literally the only Security Professional you know, you can ask me questions about your personal security and such. Happy to provide free information about security and privacy, as those issues should be free, in my opinion. We should all feel secure. Thank you for your time! Please share how we can work together or any questions you have!