Newbie in Southern California

[Adam Young]

Hey,

Like many others, I’ve stumbled upon this forum by reading The Book On Rental Property Investing.

I am 29 years old, from Newcastle, UK. Almost three years ago I traded in the rain and crumpets for the sunshine and beaches in Los Angeles, California and currently living in Laguna Beach.

I have zero experience and minimal knowledge when it comes to Real Estate. Although I had always wanted to get into RE but I did not think I would be in a position financially and therefore my money stupidly squandered elsewhere.

My ultimate goal is to create passive income as a buy and hold investor.

As of this very moment, my goals are not set in stone.
- I do not have a target date (I’m currently here on a 5 year working visa which should be extended in future, and I am hoping getting into RE will help me when applying for a green card or if I will need to get the green card before I can get into RE),
- and I am yet to select a location to begin building my portfolio (SoCal is priced quite high and I’m not sure it is a wise decision for buying my first property. I have been working in Seattle, Washington for around four months and I fully believe their local economy will grow in the future. Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing plus many other major companies are creating so much growth, I would love to monitor locations this year).

My short-term goals are strict budgeting and have $40,000 by the end of 2020 for Real Estate (I do also have stocks, REITS and growing a passive income using dividend growth and compounding). In the meantime, I’m going to be spending as much time as possible learning and understanding Real Estate via books, podcasts, meet ups if there are any recommended in my area, and importantly this forum as I can already see it is a close knit bunch here and everybody seems eager to help each other out which is awesome.

My hobby is photography, cinematography which I’m hoping to utilize this year and create a second income and I’ll be hopefully working on real estate photography, drone aerial view and video. (Hopefully this lets me branch out and grab some good contacts).

Look forward to catching up with you all,

Cheers. Adam

[Michael Haas]

Seattle can be a great rental market despite all the regulations we like to complain about. Shoreline, Bellevue, Renton, Tacoma, etc are all great choices as well. Just a matter of deciding what is important to you, what you're good at, and where you want to go and start narrowing your opportunity set. Best of luck and feel free to reach out with specific questions!