I got into contract to buy an apartment in Contra Costa, County California around 26 days back.

@Vamshi Ananth,$1k is fine in rural/outlying California (example: VA deal currently in escrow in Dixon where I set it up so the VA home-buyer is making money by getting a VA loan - that he's using to pay down his car loan muahahaha), 3% in hot urban markets (examples: Alameda, San Mateo, Contra Costa, & SF counties), but it's a convention and not a rule.

A little about me I am a Navy Vet , I am a aircraft mechanic ,I am 42 years old and I am just tired of working for people I would like to work for myself and get rid of the 9-5 job.

I am Ian, I am based in Contra Costa County.

Hi Tiffany,One of the aircraft carriers (Nimitz) is supposedly headed back to Bremerton, so there will be an influx of new tenants arriving soon.HUD has a great portal to view fair market rents in any market. https://www.huduser.gov/portal...  

So instead we have auto mechanics, aircraft mechanics, computer programmers, offshore wind farm engineers, information security analysts -- and hundreds of other things that were not even thought of a hundred years ago.This whole mess about "Robots will take your job" is just another scare tactic used by the Socialists and people leaning that way to invoke an ever larger Welfare State, considering every other tactic to convince people has failed as badly as Socialism has.So then you ask, "But Alvin, what POSSIBLE jobs could there be after the Robots take over?"

@Hud FloydI work for contra costa county fire.

After 9/11, congress (idiots) was very concerned about Al Qaeda buying residential real estate, but congress wasn't really worried about them buying apartment buildings or shopping centers or aircraft part factories (like I said, idiots).

This is likely not a common approach but I record principal payments in an expense GL account, have a subtotal for cash flow after that in reporting, and then have a matching contra-expense account that properly moves it out of the P&L and onto the balance sheet.  

If your property is SFR, it may be exempt from rent control due to Contra Hawkins.