@Sebastian Scott Welcome to Silicon Valley and our loony market my friend!

CA (especially San Jose and Silicon Valley in general) is a roller coaster as you already know.  

@Jay Hinrichs In case you havent seen this peek into history, its fascinating. You must have experienced a lot of these orchards growing up in the valley I assume. Living in Sunnyvale, I had no idea about this history...

Yes, we  had an SFR in Silicon Valley and wanted to move our equity closer that 450 Miles :)  We 1031 the Silicon Valley rental to an MFU in Redlands where this experience was a nightmare.

Same in Saratoga on homes.As for home price increase in Silicon Valley this is the tail wind of the current momentum.

Silicon valley needs more housing and jobs are in abundance.  

My plan is to avoid $200k+ in dental student loans and work at creating a solid career in software development, which has tons of potential in my area with it being "Silicon Slopes." 

Let's say home is in Silicon Valley. 

I live in Silicon Valley and Austin looks somewhat like my area twenty years ago.

I want to explore direct buy-and-hold real estate for additional diversification (at least learn enough about the subject to make an informed go/no-go decision about it).I owned my home in Silicon Valley for 33 years and sold it three years ago to retire to a part of the country where the cost of living is much lower.