<prompt> Human: My wife and I are moving to southern California by September and want to start investing in regards to real estate she already maxes her 401k. Currently we have 120k in savings my family sold some property so that contributed significantly, annual income will be 200k combined in the fall, and we have a few questions. First, as we wont be buying till September at the earliest, where should I put the 120k in savings till we need the money? Second, what first time home buyer perks can we take advantage ofhow much should we put down? Third, how quickly can we purchase the second house as an investment property after our first? Ill have more questions about taxes in the future, but right now Im just trying to make a game plan so I appreciate all the advice.  <response>: CaliforniaStop right there. You probably dont want to invest in California; almost all the properties there are either run by large property management agencies with a lot of cash or, alternately, slums.That said, if youve got 120K and, assuming you are going to live in a a HCOL area like LA, you wont really have any perks on that budget. If you buy a 400K house, most of your 120K will be down payment and reserve.You can purchase a second property whenever you want. Standard underwriting in California is going to be 25-35 down for a non-owner-occupied property and thats with generally two years of records indicating on-time payments and a 6-12 month reserve.California exposes individual landlords to potentially huge liabilities, which is why the landlord market there is getting dominated by large agencies. Unlike, say, Texas, where if a tenant fails to pay they can be out the door in two weeks, evictions in California can take months. As a result, everybodys rent goes up to cover the risk of this, and individual landlords leave the market. A big corporation with 100 units can tolerate 1 or 2 people jerking around the eviction process, whereas a mom-and-pop landlord cannot.EDIT: Am landlord and former Californian. I own rentals in another state, but would never dream of entering the California rental market again without significant financial backing and broadly distributed risk. 