Your money in the bank is actually losing value due to inflation.

With current inflation rates, you are theoretically losing money the more liquid you are.In the long-term, I highly recommend utilizing your VA loan to snag a 2-4 unit MFH in a metro market.

@Seher TaskentNot knowing where you want to buy a property is probably analysis paralysis.Seeking permission here to do so is probably a combination of your fear/not being ready.First thing first:People with money are running to hard assets due to inflation fears.

We know inflation is skyrocketing and RE has taken off, New York is a matter of time.

The only way to counteract the erosion of inflation is appreciation.

The problem with people getting underwater in real estate investing is using inflated numbers or being lazy.People got caught up in bidding wars for houses and paid far over market value, causing the mortgage to be higher than market rent.

That's not even counting the positive cash flow, tax savings, principal paydown and inflation-hedging profit centers.  

Then what you're talking about is extremely, extremely expensive teardowns, with the so-called "missing middle" being put there to maximize the economic return, which means that you will have extremely expensive rent/buy condos/townhomes/2-3-4-plexs.California suffers from the perfect storm of stupid policies, bad street planning (that's actually getting worse), some real actual natural constraints to building, and receiving a massive local inflation hit from not only the Fed's money printing machine but also from overseas investors who also have monopoly money looking either a place to dump some cash or somewhere to have an anchor baby.

You also have to look at inflation and that the cost of housing has almost tripled in the last 50 years.

The prices in Alaska are pretty inflated, so we’re looking into partnering and investing out of state.