All Forum Posts by: Heather Lanser

Thanks, Tom (and Jay). The investing-as-watching-the-grass-grow approach is really what my husband and I are comfortable with. 

Lots to consider with your post. We are not rushing into anything—we are both 40, and plan to hold whatever property we buy for 20-25 years. If it takes a year to make a move, that’s okay—we are patient people.

Thanks, all, for the input.

Ali, we have $400k capital. Since you are a fellow Californian, I would love to hear your experience!

Thank you so much to all who took the time to respond.

I think I posted prematurely. We have this money, we know we want it in REI, but are SO green with anything beyond local SFR. We have a single rental. With really nice tenants who have been there since we bought it. And we just now raised the rent $75, which is still $350 below market. GREEN.

That said, I think we’ve nailed down a couple things:

We want to buy and hold

We want cash flow

We are fairly certain we need to look outside of our state (CA)

My husband has a large family where the only strategy has been to buy and hold 5-10 SFR in our local area—it just seems like a waste of $400k to do that in California!

We are looking at small multi family residential units, an apartment building, or a mobile home park (my husband’s favorite option). 

I _think_ we have fairly modest ambitions—if we were cash flowing $10k/month in 10 years we would feel wildly successful. 

Our goal is to have an actionable plan in place within 3 months and have purchased within 12 months. 

Thank you for that!

Hey there,

My husband and I live in California and are looking to invest out of state. Turnkey properties are appealing to us, but we would like to invest in 3-4 unit properties. Do turnkey companies do that or only SFH?

We have $400k to get started with, and we want to stay in 1-2 markets—any suggestions on reputable companies in emerging markets??

Thanks so much!

We’re still trying to figure out how realistic this is, but our goal is to cash flow $20k/mo in 10 years. 

Doable with small multi family residential? 

Thanks for your reply, Jill. Wow. So that was 41 SFH in 18 months?

Hey there! My husband and I are sitting on a pile of cash ($200,000) that we've been squirreling away for 5 years in order to buy a bigger/nicer primary home. 

BUT...

We live in California, and even in the rural Central Valley prices have gone nuts (a nice 2,500 sq ft home on an 8,000 sq ft lot in the nice part of town is going for $600,000) so we have decided we would rather put that money to work.

We currently have a single unit (SFH--3/2) in our town that we purchased for $150,000 in 2009 that we can now sell (easily) for $300,000 (the mortgage is currently $79,000). The rent is below market at $1,200 (long-term tenants, husband willing to raise the rent $50/$75 a year to reach market level).

Here's what I'm thinking--take our $200,000 cash, sell the SFH, and invest our $400,000 in a more favorable market/endeavor than SFH.

What would you do with the money if you were in our position? 

Thanks so much for your input!