I’m sure you’re more informed than the average joe so as long as it cashflows after you move out, it’s in an area you’re familiar with, you have reserves for cap ex and 3-6 months of mortgage payments and have a business bank account setup you should be good to go.

You can find cash flow in Indiana or  Memphis or Cleveland or Buffalo and make $200/mo per door (unti the cap ex hits) or you can house hack a 4 plex in a good location in Sacramento for 3.5% down,  have your 3 neighbors pay the 3.5-4% note, live for free until you are ready to upgrade, keep the write offs and pick up 5%+ per year in appreciation (with the right location).    

Cap rates have compressed so much on C properties that the returns are hardly justifiable. 

List Price 114,500Top unit rents for 550Bottom unit rents for 750 Down payment - 25%Interest rate is 3.1255 % maintenance 7% cap ex15% vacancy 5% property management Taxes - 125/month Monthly expenses - 1,054Cash flow 245/month 16+% 5 year annualized return Numbers are run at a 95k purchase price.

I guess it comes from my Finance and Accounting background, but NOI, Cap Rates, it's all straight forward.

Other strategies that work are renting by the room, house-hacking, and multifamily (hard to come by in Boulder and pretty expensive/low cap rate when they do come up, but more available with better rent to price ratios in other North Metro towns like Westminster).

This is something I have to talk to him about but have a feeling he does not want to cap it to a certain amount of years and in his defense saying even if I live 20 years more not only will my Stock portfolio have exponentially increased but so has the value of the house.

. -- plus a property manager --  plus taxes -- plus all the other stuff and maintenance and cap ex., etc. --  given the apparent value, cash flow seems like it's going to be pretty negative. 

@Kevin Siedlecki Using very conservative numbers (as I'm a conservative investor), cap rate will be 7.5% (10.5% if you toss in an assumed 3% inflation rate).

What my husband and I are thinking:Sell 1 condo a year (minimize cap gain) use the money to pivot into SF in secondary market.