All Forum Posts by: Wilson Lau

I am located in California (San Jose area) and my local market is too expensive for real estate investing. I am looking at investing with a buy-and-hold strategy. Since I am no longer limiting myself to local deals, I would like to quickly filter out deals that don't make sense compared to options I may have elsewhere. I was thinking that some rules of thumb may help me with this and give me objective criteria for comparison across states. Something like "ignore deals that have less than "N%" for Cap Rate, or COC, or Return on Equity or ROI or IRR".

1. Does this make sense or should I be approaching this differently?

2. I don't know what threshold value I should use for each of these metrics. Would this be a single set of numbers across all the states or would these numbers have to be specific to any city/state?

3. Am I making things more difficult for myself by thinking of investing anywhere (I still don't have my first property) or should I pick a handful of cities/states to focus on? maybe cities that better support a buy-and-hold strategy? Market picker on bigger pockets has a number of recommendations...

4. For my first property I was thinking of going with a turnkey provider like REI Nation and hopefully learn as I go. The thinking is that a turnkey provider might prevent me from making blunders.

Any suggestions and advice would be highly appreciated!

- Niranjan 

Hey all,

My family recently inherited a 4-unit property from our grandparents located in Oakland. We uncovered that our grandparents never increased rent over the 30+ years that they had this property. 2 of the 4 units did turn over recently, so those are now at market rate. However, there are 2 tenants who are living in units that are significantly below market rate. 

Neither of these tenants have leases anymore and are essentially month to month. Also, for one of the units, we are currently unsure whether the original tenant is still occupying the unit. Her son moved in and we aren't sure whether he lives there alone now or alongside his mother.

We'd ideally like to sell off this multi-family property, but at the current rental rates for these 2 units, it doesn't make a ton of financial sense for a buyer. Would love advice on what we can we do to get both apartments back to market rate / what options we have with this property. Any other things / angles we should be thinking about?

Anyone here can help me where I can search eviction records in the bay area, california? and any available resources. I've tried to follow instructions from 10years ago but I can't see the bluebar and the resources. Can you please assist? Thank you so much

My wife and I live in California and visit Hawaii fairly frequently (all islands). We are considering buying an investment property in Hawaii. What are people's thoughts on buying investment property in Hawaii?

We are open to all investment type (long-term, short-term, mid-term rentals). We were primarily looking at Turtle Bay area for short-term rentals.

Is it possible to break even with ~20% for long-term rentals?

if we go with short/midterm, is it possible to manage it ourselves remotely? My wife has more flexible schedule and availability to manage remotely, and we are interested in managing property but this is our first investment property.

Hi all,

I am moving to the Bay Area next month, and my preferred strategy would be to get an FHA loan and buy a 2-4 unit multifamily property. Do you have any experience doing that in the Bay Area? I will have to work there and I don't want my commute to be longer than 30 minutes, just looking to see if anyone invests around the area (e.g., Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Altos, or even farther away by Morgan Hill) and what numbers are they seeing?

I don't expect to cover the entire share of the mortgage looking at property prices if I buy a 4plex but would be good to connect with folks that have experience in this area.