Beginner investor from San Jose, CA

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Beginner investor from San Jose, CA

Kenny Schumacher
Rental Property Investor · San Jose, CA · Member since 2019 · 17 posts · 16 votes

Hey everyone, my name is Kenny Schumacher and I'm a new investor living in San Jose, CA. I purchased my first residential rental property in Huntsville, AL in May 2019, which was initiated after meeting an investor during jury duty (funny story).

I'm 25 years old and graduated from Loyola Marymount University, with degrees in accounting and finance. I interned my junior year summer at a public accounting firm, which helped me finalize my decision that accounting (as well as having a "real job") wasn't for me. Instead, I pursued entrepreneurship, started some businesses, sold one, and am managing a few others.

Due to work, I don't have too much free time. But when I'm not working, I love staying active and exercising, exploring food spots, anime, and abusing AMC's A-List.

The idea of passive income, as well as making your money work for you through investing, really excites me. As it's difficult to find a positive cash flowing property in most of California, I decided to look elsewhere, and stumbled upon Huntsville by chance. I was fortunate enough to find a good realtor and property management company, and am planning on purchasing additional properties in the near term future. Should things settle down a bit and I get more time, I'd love to explore flipping too.

The easiest solution would be to continue investing in Huntsville, as everything is already setup for me there. However I would like to explore other cash flow generating opportunities (maybe Cleveland, OH?). A friend who started investing in real estate around the same time as me referred me to BiggerPockets, and it looks like a great community that I would love to be a part of!

Thanks for your time, and I'm looking forward to connecting with you all!

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Robert Matelski
Rental Property Investor · Austin, TX · Member since 2018 · 214 posts · 270 votes
7y
Originally posted by @Kevin Young:

@Robert Matelski Hey Robert How Do You Purchase All The Way From California? I’ve Been Trying To Do The Same Thing But I Thought It Would Be An Headache Since I’m In Another State

I've been thinking about how to respond to this for a bit now. Good chance I'll take some flak for this, but here it goes...

Asking me what you asked me is like the scrawny 18-year-old college freshman with bad posture walking up to the agile, lean and muscular 21-year-old college gymnast after an intense interval training session and asking him how to get in that kind of shape too. Or like a 30-something-year-old bachelor who pretty much just heats up pre-made food in the microwave for every in-home meal walking up to the chef of a successful French restaurant and asking her how he can cook like that and open a restaurant. Or like the 40-something year old lady from Chicago who doesn't have a current passport and has never left North America asking a popular travel vlogger who makes a 6-figure annual income from YouTube ads and IG post sponsorships how she too can make a living from travel vlogging. 

Unless you (or the individuals in the metaphoric examples above) can at least take some basic initiative to figure some stuff out on your own and start asking pointed and specific questions, it's generally a pure waste of time to even engage. But for better or worse, sometimes I am willing to waste some time... so what you will probably have more success doing is asking questions like the following AFTER you do some preliminary research on your own:

  • How did you find (or can you recommend) a broker/agent to work with in Cleveland (or Indianapolis or Birmingham or Memphis or whatever other cash-flow market you're considering)?
  • How did you analyze the various neighborhoods/suburbs within a given metro area to grade each area and assess the level of risk?
  • How did you select your property manager, and how have they succeeded or failed in your experiences with them thus far?
  • How can I navigate government subsidy programs (e.g. Section 8) for prospective down-market rental properties?
  • Can property valuations (used for tax purposes) be disputed in Cleveland (or whatever market), and how does the process work?

For the record, I really do like to help people learn about real estate investing, and to help them gain more success on their investment journeys. I am not posting this response to be a jerk, but to help you understand that you have to help yourself a bit first before I (or anyone else) should be expected to help you with anything.

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  • Remington LymanBusiness Member
    Real Estate Agent · Columbus, OH · Member since 2017 · 6k+ posts · 7k+ votes
    6y

    @Account Closed I personally would not want to be investing in a market that has a declining population or job growth at any point in the cycle. Different investors have different strategies though.

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  • Account Closed
    Rental Property Investor · Sacramento, CA · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 893 votes
    6y

    @Remington Lyman

    I prefer to avoid those features as well, I think it's wise to at the very least take them into  consideration. But what's worse- viable returns with a slight risk that they may one day be reduced, or inviable returns with the possibility that they may one day be viable? 

    Population and job growth are often terribly deceiving metrics anyways. I know a ton of investors that say "wow look at all the tech jobs going into city X!", then they go and invest in a working class community in that city with no relationship to the job growth cited. 

     I also see "wow, that [huge] county's population declined 2% in the last decade." But a particular city within the county has experienced significantly higher rent growth than other similar cities in counties with growing populations but stagnant rents for the past 20 years (an extremely common trend in the midwest, prob not columbus though).

    Then there's the "that city's population declined 10%", but further investigation shows an environmental crisis caused 10% of the housing supply to be deemed uninhabitable in the area... causing a population to decrease, but a massive surge in rental demand and market rents, but not an increase in value because investors see a surface level statistic without truly understanding the market dynamics, or looking at direct indicators of an asset's performance (rental demand) instead of indirect indicators (population growth).

    That last situation has actually happened to me, and I managed to grab over 60 small MFR buildings at 15-20 caps over about 2 years and sell them at 10 caps. And those investors are pumped to be getting 10 caps! The big wins come from looking beyond the information that everyone else uses to prematurely disqualify opportunities.

    Statistics kinda suck. lol

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  • Kenny Schumacher
    OP
    Rental Property Investor · San Jose, CA · Member since 2019 · 17 posts · 16 votes
    6y

    For those interested in an update, so far the Huntsville property has been doing well! It's appreciated by around 7% over the past 8 months based on its estimated value and is consistently netting high positive cash flow.

    A lot of my friends in the Bay Area have been asking me how to get started investing out of state. I don't claim to be an expert on the matter, but I'm happy to help in any way that I can for those who are in a similar position that I was in ~1 year ago.

    Below are some Huntsville stats I stumbled across a few days ago. Based on my research, there's still a lot of room to grow!

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