Hello Everyone,My name is Eric and I am an aspiring to get more involved within bigger pockets and the real estate community.

By all means, community or @Justin Campbell straighten me out where I've gone off course.If my logic is good anywhere, let me know that too so I can stick my tongue out at my wife when she's not looking.Justin, best of luck man, I don't know California at all.

So for me, while cash flow is important, especially to show banks that the properties are profitable in order to get loans on them, I think that an investor should look at the investment as a whole and not just invest solely for cash flow.I would love to get the opinion of the BiggerPockets community on how important cash flow is to them in determining which properties to invest in.

It is great to have you and please feel free to jump in the community - there are certainly great people around here!

Definitely start jumping into the community here and feel free to ask any questions related to Real Estate investing!

Have you visited a few communities to get a feel for the areas you feel comfortable working in?

The best way to jumpstart your investing career IMO is to network with others in the REI community.  

@Caleb Clay welcome to REI and the BP community!

I just wanted to acknowledge it is nice to see all the help from the BP community in situations such as this

We are not having those issues though on new construction even though make new highs.. for instance in Portlandia I am selling the exact same house on the exact size lot 1 mile as the crow flys from last years community I built .. and the house is selling for 75 to 100k more exact same house 12 months later  and I sold 23 of them in 4 months.. not one appraisal issue.. although we have had a few cash sales and most are conventional but a few FHA and one VA.so last year I sold this model for 350 to 370k  this year 439 to 459k..