All Forum Posts by: Zhenchen W.

Some considerations as to why you may not want to completely dismiss buying personal residence first.     
#1 consider equity growth in your approach.  You're not cash flowing per say on your primary residence but you are paying down debt as opposed to paying rent.    Obviously there are phantom costs in home ownership but I would still recommending run some amortization calculators to see how your longer run debt paydown looks over a 5-7 year period even at todays rates.   
#2.  If you do buy investment property first you may lose access to some (not all) potential first time home buyer benefits.  This becomes more of an issue when you're looking at community bank/credit unions /portfolio / census tract based loans.   Not your conventional/fha stuff.
#3.   Be weary of abnormally high  cash flow markets.  I personally learned this the hard way not budgeting enough for repairs, tenant damage, etc.   Fortunately I got bailed out by appreciation but thats never a guarantee.   
#4   As others have said appreciation is never guaranteed.  There are so many things that can disrupt the growth of a market.   Macro and micro effects. 
#5  Remember the current mortgage interest rate environment may be temporary.  The fed themselves release a summary of economic projections which gives insights into the target fed funds rate.   This has a significant impact on the cost of credit everywhere.   Theoretically if the projections are true we could see refinancing opportunities in the future.  
#6.  If you plan to be in nyc for the long haul there is a reasonable argument  that you'll plan down a lot of debt if you do decide to invest here in a primary residence locally.   

If you ever want to brainstorm  always happy to chat. 

Cash flow must meet a minimum threshold. As in, cash flow must be positive even in a conservative growth environment. After that threshold is met, I will then look for the market with the best long-term (10+ year) prospects for appreciation and rent growth. 

I will not invest for appreciation in such a manner as to have negative cash flow for any prolonged period of time, however. 

I'd rather take a small amount of positive cash flow in a market with great long-term prospects than more cash flow in a market with poor long-term prospects.

It's the long-living debate, I'll always take appreciation. How you get cash from that is different than cash flow, but likely greater.

If you mean more money to invest, do you mean month to month specific or do you mean just in aggregate? That's how it'll differ. I'm not a fan of month to month payments, it's the worst trick in the world. That's my personal opinion.

First one, then the other. Specifically, first cash flow then appreciation. Cash flow is what sets us free!

On the topic of turnkey - you still need to do due diligence and run your own numbers. Just because the turnkey provider says it's a great property, it'll cash flow, etc, doesn't mean it will. There have been a number of helpful guides to turnkey due diligence written over the years, see if you can hunt a few of those down.