Another New Guy From San Francisco

[Ben Kunzel]

Hello

I am new to the forum and just wanted to introduce myself. 

I have spent the past couple months getting more and more excited about rental real estate investing (reading books, listening to podcasts, etc...) and I finally feel ready to take the leap. 

My business plan in brief is to focus on small multi families out of state (looks difficult, if not impossible, to do in the Bay Area). In the next couple months I want to have an investment city or area locked down and continue to practice evaluating deals with the goal of buying my first property within the year. 

My long term goal from this is to be completely financially free within 13 years (when I am eligible to retire from my federal government job).

It would be great to hear from anyone with a similar plan who lives in the Bay Area.

I am looking forward to learning a lot from you all and hopefully I will be able to return the favor in the future!

[Hank Keller]

Ben-

My plan sounds similar but from a different state, Ohio. I started with multi family homes in a near buy community while working a FT job. However, my wife and i came across a turnkey company in Indy, adjusted our plan and we are now in year 4 of a 15 year plan to have 23 homes cash flowing 11K/month. We've purchased 8 homes from the same company in two different states which allows us to watch our local properties and be completely hands off on the turnkey side while they also generate cashflow.

When searching for a market to choose ensure it has these 4 things:

1. Population of at least 1MM with steady population growth
2. Job growth that exceeds the national average consistently
3. Business friendly government (inexpensive for structure creation and easy for landlording management)
4. Cheap Houses (we target B class, working neighborhoods at the $50-$75k level with steady 8-10% returns)

Hope this helps.

Hank