Bay Area Investor Looking for Advice on Where to invest
Hi
This is Jie from Fremont of Bay Area. I'm new here on BP. I hope I could find out BP before I invested. There are so many discussions and good advice on the forum.
I actually invested 2 properties in Antioch/Pittsburgh/Oakley area on 2013. However, the timing was not very good, and the price is already high. With so many investors buying in that area, it made it very difficult to actually close on deals. And even harder to get the property fill in with good tenant( even with the help from property manager). I've tried to look for 2-4 unit deals close to where I live, however, they either give every low cash flow, or at bad neighborhoods with lots of deferred maintenance.
I just sold one property that had negative cash flow and looking for replacement properties for a 1031 exchange. I'm still looking for a turnkey property for the price of $45k-$65k. I also plan to sell the other one once the lease is over at the end of this year. This one gives me a little bit cash flow, with some appreciation. However, it has a terrible HOA, and the bad experience with this HOA made me try to avoid any investment property with HOA.
Because of the unsuccessful experience I had investing in the bay area (even though I'm a realtor and have better access to the inventory on the market), I've switched to investing out of state turnkey properties for cash flow for the past 1 year. I had some bad lucks in ND due to the oil price drop (I learned my lesson on not to invest on single industry here). I've also been investing in Chicago for single families & 2-4 units, and getting 8-10% of returns.
I was planning to switch to other markets for more turn key properties, like Dallas, Huston, or FL to diversify my portfolio. Then I saw the debate for buying for appreciation in the bay area vs. cash flow out of state in a newbie's post for the last couple of days. Now I need some advice on my investing. Because I've tried both ways, and had bad lucks on investing locally Vs. 50/50 chances on out of state turn key investments. Where should I invest now? Especially bay area and Dallas are all at the record high prices now.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post! I'm open to other markets too as long as they make senses.
Thanks!
Jie