Seeking advice about Short Term or Long

[Bobby Clifford]

Hello, this is my first post! I am seeking advice on which direction I should go. I am quitting my day job to stay home with our children and my wife is going to continue to work. She makes enough money to sustain us without feeling much loss without my income. We are planning on investing in real estate as my new profession and aren't sure which direction is the smarter choice. We have enough down payment for a 200k mortgage.

We want to have a beach house in the Charleston SC or Savannah GA area for short term rental and for vacations. We live about 4 hours away from there. My wife has a week of vacation every 6 weeks and it would be nice to get out of our primary residence during those weeks.

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Our local rental market is phenomenal. When we relocated to this area we were unable to find any nice rentals for less than 900 a month. We own our own property now. I believe between her contacts and mine we wouldn't have any issues finding respectable people to rent our properties. There are decent homes that need updating in the 80-125k range in our area for sale. 

My long term goal would be to have multiple homes paying each home off with the income of the others. Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!