Ready to Invest, Grateful for advice!

[Honor Dunn]

Hi All,

First off, I have been reading Bigger Pockets for years and I would like to start this post expressing a tremendous amount of respect and admiration to all you folks. You are all so generous with information and I take inspiration from your bravery , intelligence and proactive mentality.

I am a first time investor,  (I did have a rental that was our first home that we turned into rental when we moved, but ultimately it was a disaster experience, more on that another time), looking to invest in 2 properties in a landlord friendly state. I live in California and and I am thinking either Ohio, Florida, Missouri or Kentucky. Every time I think I've landed on a strategy and area to buy I get distracted by another city or approach. I'm all over the place!

Latest Plan:

I was thinking about buying one property through Rent to Retire (I've already spoken to them) and using their turnkey services and buying 1 property through rootstock or even on my own and sourcing my own PM. My husband and I are both w-2s and do not qualify as real estate professionals. We have up to $100,000 to invest. in class B neighborhoods.  Does anyone have any words of wisdom or recommendations for locations, properties management companies, approaches on how too streamline the thought process  (I'm all over the place), tools/websites to use for neighborhood analysis etc.

Thank you for your time and advice!

[Larry Turowski]

@Honor Dunn I don't think you're ready. You're still considering strategies and locations per your post. I know it is hard to nail down. But your really have to define your goals and craft your strategy to match those goals. You're like I was with a quarter to spend at a candy store when I was a kid, not being able to decide what the best items were.

One thing that really helps is talking to people. Find people on BP that are doing something that you think you might be interested in, DM (direct message) them, and ask if you can have a 20min conversation. You'll be surprised at how many people are happy to talk with you. Find a local REIA in your area, maybe there is one with out-of-state investors. Network and take investors out for coffee. Prepare some questions. Not sure which questions--listen to what they ask in the podcast interviews. How did you get started? What is your strategy? Why did you choose that strategy? How has it worked for you? Have you tried anything else? What are the pros and cons?

Books and blogs and forums will only take you so for most people. Network, network network!