Hi folks,
My wife and I have been investing since 2007 and currently own 10 doors. We are mostly buy and hold investors, although I have been through a couple 1031s in the past 12 months to reposition profits from the latest upswing. My family and I live in Capitola, CA (Santa Cruz County / San Francisco Bay Area) and started by investing locally, doing rehabs on forclosed SFRs. We managed the properties ourselves. Julie has a strategy which she calls "Renter Chic", which has converted to (mostly) strong, self-managed and stable tenants. We then acquired a couple duplexes, and then last year, did our first out-of-town deal buying a fourplex in Seattle. We are currently looking for an apartment building to acquire in Seattle.
We achieved our first real estate goal this year, as our properties throw off sufficient cashflow that my wife can comfortably stay home with our newborn son and older daughter. In addition to real estate investing, I have been a partner for the last 14 years in a software company (modern tribe: http://tri.be) which builds large scale websites and apps for fortune 500 companies / government institutions. My wife and I have both run multiple businesses.
We started in real estate as window shoppers. A buddy pointed out in 2001 that billionaires open up their homes for you to gawk at for free, if you can just read the open house schedule. We used to pack a bottle of wine, a picnic and go mansion sight seeing. It was huge fun.
As soon as our son gets old enough, we plan to move to a spanish speaking country and I'm seriously fascinated with the idea of acquiring a boutique B&B in front of a solid all around surf wave.
I joined as I'm looking for some good property leads, and some buddies to share war stories (and go surfing with if you happen to be local).