Newbie, trying to find a location to invest, frustrated!

[Vince Au]

It's 2025 and I'm going to get serious about investing. Several years prior to Covid I got my finances in order to start investing. Unfortunately, Covid decided to change my plans, and I made the decision to hold off, in hindsight it was a huge mistake and no one could have imagined that property values could have increased at such a high rate. I'm self-employed and did not know if my business was going to be shut down due to the virus. During 2020 to 2022 I was fighting to keep my business profitable as materials and labor came in short supply and eventually led to the inflation we're seeing now. It seems like an uphill battle and I'm always putting out fires. I wasn't going to let this deter me so I began looking for deals but the numbers just didn't pan out. I wanted to leverage as much as I can with the equity that I have on other properties that I have in my portfolio to use as a down payment for the investment properties. There isn't enough cash flow in these deals to pay the mortgage, monthly expenses and the HELOC that I'm trying to leverage against. There's a lot of info here on BP and I'm just trying to take it one step at a time in the "Get started" section of the website. I'm not sure if the deals are just difficult at the end of 2024 in to 2025 or I'm just inexperienced. I'm also concerned about the real estate market as a whole. The sentiment feels a lot like 2008, home prices are unaffordable, Price to earning ratio don't make sense, rents are high (which is a goo thing only of the homes weren't so expensive), I feel like it's a ticking time bomb with the debt crisis. Am I paranoid and just making excuses and being too cautious? Being cautious has caused me to miss some great opportunities in the past 4 years. I do have some investment experience and I'm currently managing 1 property, all the numbers are great and there's a good amount of cash flow and long term growth so I'm not a total green horn. Any guidance and feed back on my frustration at this moment would be appreciated.