All Forum Posts by: Daniel Smilansky

Hi Everyone,

I am new to BiggerPockets, and like many others, I have fallen in love with the lively community and wealth of information. Everyone seems to be very helpful and I hope I can pay it forward! After paying off lots of debt and establishing myself financially, I began exploring the stock market last year, and I quickly found out that the stock market enables the rich to get richer, yet does not service those looking to build wealth nearly as well as I thought.

Aside from my own tech entrepreneurial adventures (I am a web developer), I wanted to give real estate a shot and see what it was all about. A month ago, I stumbled upon the Vegas AirBnB article that went viral and I became even more intrigued (http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bought-apartment-rent-airbnb/).

I ended up finding bigger pockets through google and I immediately read the beginner's guide to real estate investing. From there, I created a plan, and my goal is to purchase rental properties in order to implement a buy & hold strategy in secondary and tertiary cities that are rapidly growing.

Being from Los Angeles, there are not many great buy & hold properties in my immediate area, and I am open to doing heavy research on out-of-area properties. Although I am not opposed to areas like Charlotte, Dallas, Houston or Memphis, I would prefer somewhere closer, if possible, such Phoenix, Las Vegas or Bakersfield.

Not sure if it is inappropriate to share finances here, but I have 40k saved up and another 15k in retirement accounts at my disposal. I also have 780+ credit. Can anyone suggest markets to explore? My research has been limited to Zillow thus far since I don't have access to the MLS. Also, can anyone suggest ways for discovering properties? I believe I will start contacting real estate agents in a few markets to see what is out there, but any referrals to reputable ones would be more than welcomed!

Also, I would be happy to exchange expertise as I am heavily involved in the tech space and can offer quite a bit of advice in that area. Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Daniel

@Account Closed He owns two 8 unit buildings.

@Trevor Lohman - I am also a new investor from LA who was looking into SFH with my dad in the Bakersfield or Inland Empire area. The insight from this thread has been great, and it appears that we need to do a ton of research (but that probably applies anywhere) in order to successfully buy and hold in SoCal. My roommates dad owns a few apt buildings in LA and I can reaffirm the difficulty of managing tenants in California - he constantly shares stories about difficult tenants, especially with regards to eviction.

Perhaps some of us could combine our forces and look into different areas together?