Am I crazy?! Quitting my job and moving to Washington.

[Garret S.]

I'm tired of the midwest (Chicago suburbs).  My wife and I have lived here our entire lives.  We do not have kids yet or any other main reasons to keep us here.  So, we are deciding to sell our house, leave my job, and move to Washington, Seattle or surrounding areas.  As of right now, I will not have a job lined up because it's nearly impossible to get a job if you're not local, I've been trying for years.  We are putting our house up on the market in July and expect to sell the house rather quickly, based on the history of nearby properties.  Once we sell the house, we will only have the money made from the sale.  The plan is to find a place to rent month-to-month while I intensely look for a job.  After landing a job, the goal is to house hack a duplex as soon as we can.  This is where I could use some advice and I have some questions.

1.  Is there a good way to find a place to rent with a month-to-month agreement, as cheap as possible?  Keep in mind, I have 5 well-behaved pets (1 dog, 4 cats) and I will not have job yet.  We would be willing to pay upfront.

2.  Assuming I land a job, how will that gap in my employment history affect my chances of getting a loan?  Will I need to be in this job for a certain amount of time before the lender accepts it as my income?

3.  Finally, I would love to make connections with real estate agents and other investors in Washington, especially those who deal with multifamily homes.

Thanks in advance.

[Michael Rogers]

Moving before you have a job lined up makes me nervous.  Not sure what field you are in, but websites like www.indeed.com aggregate available jobs in markets and can email you each day with the new jobs in your field for the zip code you are looking in.  

I'd line up a job first and make sure you find a market that is promising for an investor.  It's going to be impossible for you to get bank financing on an investment property if you don't have a job and if you go very long without a job you'll drain your reserves and will just have to spend more time building back up cash before you start investing.

Those are just my thoughts, but I'm also a cautious CPA. :)

Good luck!