New to Bigger Pockets -- Physician Investor

[Joshua Nackenson]

I'm a new RE investor and new to BP! I'm an Emergency Medicine physician in the Bay Area a few years out of residency training (still paying off loans). 

My first property is in a Dallas suburb that I purchased using a physician loan in 2016, I ended up moving to California in 2020 where I started to rent out the property. 

A few things I've learned after 6 months of being a landlord:

- market research needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The median rent for properties in my zip code is $1,550 but the small portion of my neighborhood is higher around $1,700. Additionally, the property had a lot of renovation by the previous owner and as such it's very unique compared to many of the other homes in the area. I'm currently renting for $2,150.....>35% of the median rent price. If I thought I was going to be getting close to $1,550 I would have just sold it, now I'm cash flowing several hundred per month.

- include a no smoking clause in the lease. I overlooked this -- fortunately the tenants are keeping it to the garage. 

Anyway, I love working in Emergency Medicine but I got interested in REI due to the financial freedom it generates. Right now I'm trying to figure out where my REI journey will take me. My primary goal is to be cash-flowing $10k/month within 10 years.

I realize with SFH it's going to take a lot of deals to get there....

At this point I'm trying to figure out where to put my energies:

- small MFH

- commercial (apartments, storage or industrial)

- LP in syndications

One of the challenges I have with REI that no one seems to talk about is the labor that it takes to find deals and carry them out. As a higher income earner, if I were to account for my labor costs in deal analysis a lot of these deals suddenly start looking much less appealing...perhaps this is because I haven't quite figured out my path yet. Just some food for thought.

I appreciate any input/advice and happy to help anyone I can!