My spouse has a SFH that we live in, and I have a condo that I rent a room from. We live in the suburbs of Los Angeles and we were thinking about potential real estate opportunities. Our goal is to create different sources of income, diversify, and slowly begin to replace our regular income. We wanted to get some advice about our thinking on the issue to see if we are going about this the right way.
Prices and interest are still high in the areas that we live so when looking at home whether they are SFH, condos, townhomes it doesn’t seem to yield positive cash flow if only putting 20% down and renting out using the estimated rates on Zillow. My thought was that there could be more possibility further out from Los Angeles in areas that are between 30-50 miles away. Comparing prices to rent suggests that there is some room to at least break even or make a profit in theory after accounting for housing expenses, HOA, etc. If we used a loan perhaps refinancing in the future will allow for lower payments.
Fortunately, we do in theory have the ability to pay cash for houses up to a certain amount but it would require paying capital gains from sales of stock.
We each own homes and I’ve rented/rent out my family has had even more experience with owning and renting so we have some experience doing this however I am not sure if there is an opportunity at this time?
We don’t have any special skill to do any extensive repair or remodeling of homes on our own and would need to hire someone so we can’t really buy fixer uppers.
