At a certain point, I can see the scales tipping to paying off the loans, but if you are in your growth phase, leverage is the name of the game. someone posted above on how you go through phases and no question debt is necessary to scale.and its a balance of those things and personal decisions if you want to Dave Ramsey it or BP it.. for me though and having a front row seat to the 08 to 2011 melt down and the 89 to 93 CA melt down.. thinking your protected when you have 75 to 80% LTV loans is just kidding yourself.. you have no equity.. in those scenarios  ... and exits can be painful if values drop even a little. and you are in need of exiting.. or your leveraged to the hilt and your cash flow drops by 20% most folks would be in trouble..    

Question, being from California why buy in Gloucester County, NJ?

Sorry, I left out that this is in Fresno, CA.

I would intern at what ever real estate companies your interested in.My daughter was interested in finance.. and she interned during collage with a high level appraisal company that did apprasing for emanate domain cases.. and she worked on the one in Napa CA were the state and city bought out a big swatch of the napa river for flood control project and many business had to be relocated from hotel to shopping center to car dealer all of them needed to be valued.. it was high level work she enjoyed it.she then went on to graduate top of her class at Davis CA.. in managerial economics degree and promptly got snapped up my Intel after offers from Apple and Micro soft.now 14 years later she is a SEnior controller and a Dave Ramsey disciple which means at her age home just about paid for 2 kids in grade school and NO debt and a ton of savings and max's out her 401k.. she has little interest in real estate she owns one rental but only rents it to family. that was her path.  

I can't figure out how anyone makes money in rentals in the Bay Area so we will likely look to invest in markets that are long distance from where we currently live, but in areas we could see ourselves living in one day in the future: Southern California (North County, San Diego), Oregon, and Louisiana.Looking forward to soak up as much I can and meeting the many fine folks on these forums as well as finding areas I can help others out (I build websites for a living).Cheers!

Is  this something that I should be concerned about in California?

I have been wholesaling properties in the Kansas City market since 2014 and I have seen the supply of homes for sale shrink every year causing appreciation plus the cash flow is much better than ca.

I love the idea, however, I have to consider California laws as well.

looking for Commercial realtor to help in buying MFR properties in Stockton California ?

I ultimately went with Arizona because I thought I would rather visit AZ twice a year than Oklahoma, Ohio, or Illinois.Phoenix and Tucson were equally good choices- but there were a few other cities I also really liked.I looked for any city/community with consistent job, population, and wage growth.