All Forum Posts by: Jessica Yuan
Jessica Yuan has started 7 posts and replied 16 times.
Post: Advice on building equity or cash flow
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
Quote from @Eric Fernwood:
Hello @Jessica Yuan,
You need both. Cash flow pays bills, and appreciation grows wealth.
If your goal is long-term financial independence, then you need a rental income that increases faster than inflation and will last throughout your lifetime. Also, you'll likely need more than one property to replace your current income so you need to acquire multiple properties with the least additional capital.
Rents follow property prices, with a 2 to 5 year lag. When prices are high, fewer people can't afford to purchase so they are forced to rent. The increased demand for rental properties increase rents. When prices are low, more people can afford to purchase and fewer people rent leading to static or declining rents.
The city requirement for rising prices and rents can be summarized as follows:
-
Significant and sustained population growth. Population growth is the demand side of the supply and demand equation.
-
Low crime. People move to a city for a job. They don't just randomly move. Companies hesitate to set up new operation in cities known for high crime.
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Low operating costs. Every dollar you lose to overhead is a dollar less for you to live on. Some states, like Texas and Florida, have very high operating costs. Nevada has relatively low operating cost. Here’s a comparison of average homeowners insurance costs and property tax rates in 2025 for Florida, Nevada, and Texas:
State Avg. Homeowners Insurance (Annual) Avg. Property Tax Rate Typical Annual Property Taxes Florida $2,625 [per year]nerdwallet 0.80% ~$2,338 makefloridayourhome Nevada $1,305 [per year]nerdwallet+1 0.50% ~$1,335 (on $267K median) worldpopulationreview+1 Texas $4,585 [per year]nerdwallet 1.60–2.50% ~$5,200–$7,500+ (on $325K) hometaxsolutions
Key points:
- Florida and Texas rates can be much higher in coastal or urban areas, and local tax rates vary. Nevada also offers some of the lowest property taxes nationwide.
Sources:
- Homeowners insurance: National/state averages for $300K dwelling coverage with typical deductible.nerdwallet+1
- Property tax: State/local government averages and example calculations.makefloridayourhome+3
- https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/average-homeowners-insurance-cost
- https://www.makefloridayourhome.com/florida/blog/property-tax-in-florida
- https://www.nerdwallet.com/insurance/homeowners/nevada-home-insurance
- https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/nevada/property-tax
- https://smartasset.com/taxes/nevada-property-tax-calculator
- https://www.hometaxsolutions.com/2025/06/how-property-taxes-are-determined/
- https://www.nerdwallet.com/insurance/homeowners/florida-home-insurance
- https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/homeowners-insurance/states/
- https://www.axios.com/2025/08/26/home-insurance-premiums-cost-map
- https://matic.com/cost-of-homeowners-insurance-guide/
- https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/homeowners/average-home-insurance-cost-calculator-texas/
- https://www.greatflorida.com/blog/2025/how-much-is-home-insurance-in-florida/
- https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/floridians-vote-to-increase-property-tax-break
- https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/homeowners/average-cost-home-insurance-nevada/
- https://states.aarp.org/texas/texas-homeowners-insurance-rates-rise
- https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/04/texas-legislature-property-tax-cuts-2025/
- https://www.marketwatch.com/insurance-services/homeowners-insurance/average-home-insurance-cost/
- https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/property-taxes-by-state
- https://www.insurance.com/home-and-renters-insurance/home-insurance-basics/average-homeowners-insurance-rates-by-state
- https://belonghome.com/blog/property-taxes-by-state-2025
I hope this helps.
very helpful, thanks for the thoughtful response!
Post: Columbus OH median sale price
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
thank you all very much for helping me learn about the market! That makes a lot of sense
Post: Columbus OH median sale price
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
Hey fellow ohio investors,
I'm looking at the median sale price for Columbus properties and saw an interesting trend. Why does the sale price always dip in January and peak in ~August of each year? Could someone please explain why there's such a consistent pattern on the sale price? Does that mean there're fewer buyers in winter always?
Thank you all very much.
Post: Sharing a quick market analysis that I did
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
Quote from @Corby Goade:
Here's a secret- the agents that you are fed on the agent finder tool here are just paying BP to have their name pop up. BP will take any agent who will pay them for that right, they don't vet them or interview them to make sure they will guide you or have any kind of experience at all.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't use that tool, but I'm definitely saying that you shouldn't assume those agents have any type of clue what they are talking about. I know agents in my market who are paying to be on there and they don't own their own home, don't own any investments and some of them have literally never represented anyone in a transaction- zero experience of any kind.
At a high level, you should be working with an agent who;
-Lives and invests in the same market you want to invest in.
-Does at least 25 transactions per year.
-Is a full time real estate agent.
-Well connected in their market to property managers, lenders and contractors in all trades.
-Returns all inquiries within one day.
There will defintely be good agents on the BP agent finder (I'm on there and I"m the BEST, lol)....but don't assume they understand anything about investing just because they're on BP.
I'm happy to help you find and vet an agent in the markets you are looking at if you like.
Best of luck out there!
Thank you so much for your advice Corby!
Post: Sharing a quick market analysis that I did
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
Quote from @Nicholas L.:
I don't mean the following response to be discouraging... but here goes. You're trying to math your way to a market, which is understandable given the prices in California, but unfortunately what we see this lead to is investors buying in a random market thousands of miles away, in a challenging neighborhood, without a team that they know in place, and then they just lose money. And what's the point of doing that? These properties look like they make money on paper because they're bought with unrealistic assumptions... and then they don't turn out as planned.
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/1242392-rough...
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/48/topics/1137397-balti...
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/432/topics/1231840-sell...
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/840134-memph...
https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/963/topics/1195280-expe...
If possible, I'd pick a market within a couple of hours of you. Advantage: you can be there, yourself, in person. And if you truly can't do that, I'd still pick a market that's closer, where you have family, or went to college in, or vacation in, or hope to move to someday, or are interested in going to. Basically anything other than a low median home price as the top criterion.
If you're buying a plain long term rental, you are not going to cash flow right away, in any market. Not in Walnut Creek, and not in Scranton. Just do the math - see how long it will take you just to pay off closing costs if you're "cash flowing" $78 a month.
I hope this helps. I'm happy to connect and/or answer any questions you have. Again, not trying to be discouraging, just trying to protect your capital.
Thank you so much for your insights Nicholas! This is very helpful!
Post: Sharing a quick market analysis that I did
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
Hey fellow out-of-state investors,
I just got started with out-of-state investing and am actively reading books & learning market and deal analysis.
As an exercise, I used the "Top 100 Cash Flow Markets 2024" from BiggerPockets. The goal is for me to downselect 5 markets to research.
My criteria is 1) median home price <=200k, and 2) needs to have a decent population of >150k.
Below is my analysis. The scatter plot has Rent YoY growth as X axis and Price YoY Growth as Y axis. The size of the datapoint tells you how big of a population each city has.
But here're two questions that confused me, and I'm hoping to get some insights from folks here:
1) Just for down-selection purpose, I think intuitively I should look for cities that are on the TOP RIGHT corner and avoid those on the BOTTOM LEFT. But these cities are really niche, I can't even find realtors to connect with on the Bigger Pockets websites for some cities, even though their numbers look great.
2) The cities that have Rent to Price ratio >=0.7% has relatively lower rent growth and price growth. Why would that be the case?
I appreciate anyone giving any insights and suggestions about my questions and my analysis. I'm also wondering if anyone has or is considering investing in any of these areas.
Thank you all very much.
Post: Advice on building equity or cash flow
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
Hello everyone,
I'm looking to buy my first rental property and when I was reading Dave Mayer's Start with Strategy book, he mentioned a very interesting point:
"one approach that I personally subscribe to is to focus on equity growth early in your career and then shift the balance of your portfolio towards cash flow later. The idea is not to completely ignore cash flow, but rather to seek deals for their potential for equity gains, even if that means a modest cash-on-cash return.
Due to the combined forces of value-add, market appreciation, amortization, and leverage, seeking deals that build equity can generate large amounts of capital with which you can reinvest. If you spend the early days amassing equity, getting cash flow later in your career is relatively easy, you can do it through rebalancing and deleveraging."
Is this the strategy that you guys are using? Any advice on focusing on equity or focusing on cash flow for my first rental property? This will really help with what deals I should look into. I'm currently researching long-distance investing since California is not affordable for me.
Thank you!
Post: Advice on building equity or cash flow
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
Hello everyone,
I'm looking to buy my first rental property and when I was reading Dave Mayer's Start with Strategy book, he mentioned a very interesting point:
"one approach that I personally subscribe to is to focus on equity growth early in your career and then shift the balance of your portfolio towards cash flow later. The idea is not to completely ignore cash flow, but rather to seek deals for their potential for equity gains, even if that means a modest cash-on-cash return.
Due to the combined forces of value-add, market appreciation, amortization, and leverage, seeking deals that build equity can generate large amounts of capital with which you can reinvest. If you spend the early days amassing equity, getting cash flow later in your career is relatively easy, you can do it through rebalancing and deleveraging."
Is this the strategy that you guys are using? Any advice on focusing on equity or focusing on cash flow for my first rental property? This will really help with what deals I should look into. I'm currently considering long-distance investing since California is not affordable for me.
Thank you!
Post: SF bay area advice on how to find partners on first deals
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
@Mike Paolucci I see, thank you for your advice!
Post: SF bay area advice on how to find partners on first deals
- New to Real Estate
- San Francisco Bay Area
- Posts 16
- Votes 21
@Nadeem Alamgir I see, thanks for the advice!