Real Estate as long term investment - looking for advice

[Anton Rachitskiy]

Hello fellow BP members,

It's my first post here, but was reading forums for quite a while. 

I have rough strategy defined for me, but it's still hard to see what my exact strategy should be, if you can advise I'll greatly appreciate it.

Background:

• Never bought a house
• 798 credit score
• Good tax report only starting from 2015 (was living in different country for quite a few years)
• Self-employed, therefore no W2
• Have $50k in cash right now
• Can (and want) to invest around $20k on a monthly basis
• Living in Cleveland, OH
• Stay at home wife and a small kid

Goals:

• Have long term investment
• Spend as less time as possible on each unit (use property management services and contractors)
• Do the most investment in the following 2 years (will be moving out of country after 2 years)

Ideas:

• Get single family home via cash (or loan since it's going to be a primary residence ?) in area where a lot of renters live, fix it up over summer and live ourselves there - rent it out after 2 years when we relocate 
• Build up a portfolio of multi or single family homes - what would be the best way to acquire them ? Loans or cash on foreclosed ones - use BRRR method ? Should I be looking at more expensive houses in better neighborhoods or just focus on multiple houses in average neighborhoods ( I don't want to try my luck in scary neighborhoods)

I know it's very vague, but that's exactly my state of mind right now ... just not sure what path I should follow and I really love having a well defined path, especially when it comes to managing money.

Thank You for the help

[James Wise]

Welcome aboard @Anton Rachitskiy

Let me throw a curve ball your way.

Instead of the two options you mentioned why not just purchase a 2-4 unit property with an FHA Loan. You have great credit so there is no reason for you to pay cash when you could get into your home, have your mortgage covered by the other tenants and only be out of pocket 3.5% of the purchase price.

As you know here in Cleveland, you can pick up some multi family properties for pretty cheap so you could use the remaining funds to pick up an additional property with a 25% down payment.

Thoughts?