If they're your parents, or a child, that's one thing, but owning rental property to supplement someone else housing costs is not a good investment strategy.

The actual cash flow increases at a rate that approximates the rent appreciation which in recent years has been great.Are you prepared to supplement initial negative cash flow to a time in the future when the RE has actual cash flow?

I no longer have the "9-5" but I still do freelance work and consulting to supplement my income.

We used the profit from the house and our savings to than supplement that with pure rentals to grow our houses quicker.

I'm just looking to help supplement income a tad.

Goals:Make supplemental income to help pay for daycare.Use income from investments to build a secure foundation for my families future. 

I'm giving myself the next week or so to sift through this wealth of info to get a solid foundation and begin to get a better idea of what exactly I need supplements for.

I recently joined the BP community not too long ago myself and currently in NorCal and have been increasingly digging into all of the resources on here about starting REI - I must agree with you also that this warm welcoming community supplemented by solid advice left and right makes you feel so supported and able!

We have twin girls on the way and would like to start something we can pass down to them in the future while supplementing our income along the way.  

Fundamentally, there are more important factors to consider, and the fact that a place is a "buyer's" or "seller's" market ought to be a supplement to an investment decision, rather than the overarching point of contention.But anyway, I'm doing out-of-state investing for right now because I don't really have nearly enough capital to do investments here.PS GO BEARS!