@hanera
Its true what you say about the family profile as prospective tenants but at times divorce happens, separation happens …cannot foresee that …
Love my husband but my portion of stock return was 48.8%. He sort of dragged us down last year 
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If you only have your primary residence, then keep on holding and enjoying life. If you have two or more properties, you might want to consider selling because there are plenty of better money making opportunities out there.
What are the better money making opportunities? Thought everything are bad. Shorting of stocks seem profitable though.
Beware of what the stock market is telling us in 2018. Many tech stocks have corrected by over 20% from their recent highs, meaning that expectations for corporate profits and therefore jobs are at risk. Leveraging up to buy a huge asset in this part of the cycle is very dangerous.
Good advice.
His “better opportunities” are RE in Midwest. That violates the first 3 laws of real estate: location, location, location.
I believe his current view favors conservative investment, and the way I understand is he is looking at RE in Midwest as if investing in Bond equivalent. I think this is where most of us on this forum disagree with his Midwest investment unless we want to start being conservative
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FS is making a classic income vs appreciation trade off. To be super conservative one can buy Bay Area RE with a huge down payment, and still enjoy the great locations here.
Buying Midwest RE is not necessarily conservative. To use a bond analogy, Midwest RE is like a high yielding bond, BA RE is low yielding. Low yield actually means higher grade. So BA RE I would say is actually more conservative than Midwest RE.
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Why would anyone buy anything in Midwest when they can buy in Bay Area.
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My highest ROI returns have been outside the BA. I think for a primary sfh the BA is good long term. But for high ROI I found better results with self storage and multi family in other areas.
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Your result follows @manch’s analogy of high vs low yield bonds and the quality of the underlying instruments.
The most useful ROI is the lifetime ROI from the time of purchase to sale, including all the capital gains, rental income/loss, repairs/renovations, property tax and income tax.
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… as well as any ability for the instrument to help one minimize estate tax, or minimize taxes that would otherwise arise from one’s passing.
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That is what I mean. IRR too
Edit: Meant prop 13 below
That’s the key factor many people miss I think. Your heirs get your investment property with no tax liability. To use a bond analogy, with inflation+ Prop 10+ Estate tax rules, you can essentially convert a low-yield high-grade asset into a high-yield high-grade asset for your heirs.
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So interesting thing for us… Bought in July, our old rental went on the market in late September. Just went off the market this week (though they removed online listing, they haven’t removed the post/sign out front). They had a rent-drop while waiting. I guess we weren’t underpaying by all that much, but I do wonder if the market is cooling.
Oversupply of rentals. Every upgraders rent out previous primary. Everyone who has RSUs and felt that stocks are too volatile bought rentals. Every renters want to buy a primary later, so downgrade to a cheaper rent house (in same or cheaper neighborhoods) to save more cash for down payment. Also many new apartments built over the last few years.
Bull case. Those apartment buildings aren’t empty. If the new offices are occupied by more employees this will merely be a blip. Google and Facebook have been spending a lot of money on real estate.
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My rental had multiple offers 4 weeks ago. I rented above market value. Right now it’s quite hot.
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The profile renting apartments and SFHs are not exactly the same. Apartments are more suitable to singles and couples without kids. Family needs SFHs.
Where? Fremont?