new member from Oakland, CA

[Jessica Skupien]

Hi everyone!

My name is Jessica and I'm so excited to join this community. My husband, Mike, and I are just starting to dip our toes in the REI water by learning as much as we can about multi-unit cash flow properties in particular. We have no past experience in real estate investing but we're really good at learning new things and the internet is a remarkable place filled with lots of useful information!

Mike is an active duty service member (Coast Guard) so we will probably pursue a VA loan for a 4plex as our first investment once he gets re-stationed in 2016. Right now, living in the Bay Area, it seems unrealistic to purchase an owner-occupied cash flow property given the inflated market here (does anyone disagree with that?).

My short term goal is to quit my corporate consulting job and become a full time investor at some point in the next 2 years. I'm also considering becoming a Real Estate agent to help facilitate our investments though I'm still trying to sort through the pros and cons of that approach.  

Longer term, our goal is to have enough properties to generate a sufficient passive income to live off of. But who knows where this journey will take us in the process!

So thankful to have found the BiggerPockets community (heard about it on a Money Tree Investing Podcast) and that we were fortunate enough to avoid the draw of expensive guru programs.

Looking forward to getting to know you all and eventually being able to contribute our own knowledge!

Jessica

[Jessica Skupien]

thanks for the response, @Eric Zou!  from my limited perusal of forums related to Oakland, J. Martin and Arlen seem like the go-to guys!   just read arlen's post about his recent deal near temescal. I don't mean to imply there are no cashflow deals here, just that the ones that do exist are perhaps a bit of out my league at this point in time, being a newbie and all.

aggressiveness is part of my DNA, hopefully it doesn't get me into trouble in our REI endeavors :)