There is a 300K house. Suppose you get a LTV of 95%. If you put down 15000. The property goes up by 15000 (5% of the property’s full value) the first year, you’ve doubled your money. It’s called cash-on-cash investing.

Think of it this way: Your original loan amount is 285000 on a 300000 investment. You put 15000 down. The property went up to 315000. Just subtract the amount you owe on the loan (285000) from the value you get 30000. That’s twice the cash you put in. On paper, at least, your investment doubled.

Since I understand your situation perfectly, you posted a while ago about your goal to break 10M in XX years. If that is indeed your goal. You will not realize that in Bay area. You have to realize it somewhere you can break your equity into multiple portons, then invest in smaller sized properties in that you can make reasonable cash flow. Real estate is 100% cash flow and leverage business. Good school is not investor’s primary concern, it’s primary home owner’s primary concern.

I think going back to high tech and make good salary is a sensible approach. At this time, you need cash to accumulate more properties. Many investors are part time, they make good salaries. Because unless you are a full time real estate agent, you really don’t need to devote 100% time to real estate. You can manage all your 4 houses on a part time basis. Assuming you have all of them rented out on a long term lease, you actually have very little to do during the day. General rule of thumb is you don’t quit your job before accumulating 12 houses. Investing in real estate is to get passive income. I am sure right now your passive income from cash flow is not good enough yet.

About 1), I don’t have suggestion about who to contact to you because I usually don’t work with agents. However, if you buy and sell houses without as much experience as I do, I strongly suggest that you work with a competent agent. Currently, it’s not a market to do “For sale by owner”.

Let’s say you choose to save every penny, not invest in property and stock market. In 10-15 years, average house you look for will rise from today’s $1M price to $3M price. At the same time, your saved money, for example $150K, will reduce to 50K in buying power when you look from year 2017. Simply put, even if you still own 150K face value in savings account, your actually loss will be 100K in buying power. If you consider the opportunity loss of missing to buy this $1M house back in 2007, your total loss will be: