Re: I disagree about risk.-- question to Ron Starr - Posted by Ronald * Starr(in No CA)
Posted by Ronald * Starr(in No CA) on September 25, 2003 at 09:33:33:
Nancy–(PA->CA)
I do not recommend foreclosure investing for people in Coastal CA. There are are already a tremendous number of people doing it and the profits are therefore low and hard to get. It MAY be that this is less so in the Los Angeles area, but I doubt it. Years ago, when I did teach a course in Orange County about researching foreclosures in the county offices, there were many people doing foreclosure investing. I suspect it is even worse now.
Perhaps somebody who has explored the opportunities in foreclosure investing in Southern Coastal CA can give his or her view.
You see, the prices of the properties are so high that investors cannot get positive cash flow with them with rentals. So many of them turn to rapid-turn properties to make a profit. That drives up the competition for those type of properties dramatically, making it hard to find good deals.
I’d recommend that you try to assess the prospects of success doing fixer-uppers before you move to Los Angeles. There are a lot of houses there, so it may be that you can get your share of the rundown ones. And, because house prices are so high, if you can buy right, each property has the prospect for a very good profit. However, I suspect that it is one of the worse areas of the country to try to be a real estate investor.
Working for a title company is certainly a possibility, but before you do so, I recommend that call the title companies and find out what they pay. I suspect that you might find it too little to be able to live on. You might want to simply learn to do title work on your own. Or perhaps you can find some small operation there in PA where you could get personal attention and training. There are many people across the country who do not work for the large title insurance companies but make a living doing title work for corporations and others.
I’d like to be more encouraging to you, but my perception is that it is extremely difficult to be a real estate investor in Coastal CA. I certainly recommend that you do not move here without doing as thorough an investigation as you can of your prospects here.
I know some 15 years ago there was a very highly successful TX real estate investor who moved here to the San Francisco Bay Area. He said that it took him about six months to figure out how to make money here. The environment for real estate investing here is much more difficult than it was then.
Good Investing**************Ron Starr*************