To be honest, I’m too busy to be making this decision right now.

To be honest, I´m in the Maintenance & Construction for corporate businesses for some US companies in Mexico and we do some Real Estate down here also, but it´s way much different than the US, so I have much to learn from a lot of people around here and as @Julio Gonzalez, I think this is pretty much the right pad and place to start and to break my fears to start all over again from scratchAlso, I´ld like to hear more from @Justin Brickman why he voted for his city, pros and cons, it will help to read from a local...As I said before, thank you all guys for taking the time to write in this post and share some experienceDo you plan to owner occupy. $40k will not get you a non owner occupied San Diego property unless you find some unlikely alternate financing.

But that honestly looks like it is all set up to try and be a banking solution (ie, get as many users keeping money in BaseLane's bank accounts so they can make that sweet sweet float on the interest.

(not letting emotion decide how much your property is worth") Ideally, yes.But let's be honest-- most agents don't care about getting their client the best deal, but just closing the deal particularly on the buy side.

I live in jersey but bought my property in Pennsylvania because jersey and NY are extremely expensive.  

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.DM us if you’d like to discuss this logical approach in greater detail!

Honestly have never touched the traditional mortgage side of the bank. 

On the other side, the bigger companies have more experience and their numbers tend to be more accurate (not always)... as they are big companies "their costumer service" and communication is better but at the same time they "have more mouths to feed" if we need to be honest so can get a bunch of ok or good deals but I kinda doubt they will be great (just my personal candid opinion).

Two of the biggest challenges I face are that I’m not very liquid at the moment, and the Seattle area is extremely expensive.

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.DM us if you’d like to discuss this logical approach in greater detail!