Hi,I'm a complete newbie to this whole real estate investing thing. 

Welcome to BiggerPockets and best of luck on your real estate investing journey!

Go to a local real estate meetup and ask other investors who they've used.  

I'm a real estate agent specializing in investment properties in Pinellas County, particularly near the beaches.

According to the US census data Los Angeles, CA county population declined 3.5% in the last few years as you can see here:(Data from April 2020 - July 2023).But Real Estate prices went up in that period 25% according to Zillow (From $665,868 to $834,772).Rents went up 18% (From $2,380 to $2,827).How that can be?

But in real estate there are a lot of random variables that happen throughout the process so get prepared to roll with the punches.

I’ve started to explore the “creative deals” side of real estate & honestly it’s pretty amazing.

I only had a real problem 1 time during those 25 years when I ended up with a full house (22 guests) and two of the rooms were from a different culture that stayed up late into the night and ended up annoying the other guests stomping around and making noise.

Hi Tom,I'm a real estate agent specializing in investment properties in Pinellas County, particularly near the beaches.

If you are unsure, selling your LTR and getting into a bad STR might just take you out of the real estate business until you can regroup and go back to long-term.