You need to find buyers, figure out what they want, and then go find it.

I figure with as expensive as the homes are here I would be looking at maybe around the same down payment. 3.5% in Cali vs 20% on an out of state.  

We decided to rent our home out until we could figure out what to do next. 2 years later we are now starting to get into real estate investing and we are trying to find a way to be able to tap into the equity that has built up in our home in order to get our investments moving, but we are running into issues with this since the home is now a rental property and not our primary residence.

I was also figuring that Those two strategies could work well together.

If you get creative and figure out a way to find deals, you could probably pull it off.I’m not trying to discourage you at all.

So to analyze the property I should use 885 as my property tax figures or is there a different number or formula to figure that out?

@Amy Thompson I think you’ve already got this figured out.   

Build your calculators so you fully understand where the building is at currently (income and expense) and then understand the math to figure possible costs and value after you fix it up.

My husband works and I stay at home so I would be the one really doing the legwork and I am currently trying to decide if that is something we should invest in.We talked to two realtor agents that we know and they did not have any good information on multifamily properties for investments and that is driving me to more want to just go figure it out for myself.

I'd like to be able to do a "value add" of having a Welcome Basket to greet my guests, but I'm trying to figure out how to make sure it will go smoothly as I can't be there to create it each time.