Have funds, but where do I start?

[Nick Gupta]

Hello BP Community, 

I have been a long time lurker here and a big time fan of the BP community. Really excited to finally become a member and start my path to financial independence.

A little background about myself: I have a well paying job that allows me to save about 40K a year after all my expenses. I also have roughly 400K saved up and would like to start investing in real estate. I have always been fascinated with real estate versus the stock market but I just don't know where to start.

My goal is to have about 8-12K of monthly passive income coming in from real estate investing without having to dedicate a lot of my time to managing the properties (I understand for this I would need hire well established and reputable Property managers for my investments). My first thought process before I started reading up on real estate and listening to the many podcasts on this platform was to get into the flipping side of SFR's, but the more and more I read I feel that buy and holds are probably the best bet for building wealth and having a monthly income stream coming in from your investments.

I just have no idea where to start. Multi Family's seem very hard to manage and I personally am not that confident to pursue that path for any of my initial investments. With that being said, I am thinking of pursuing SFR's in good cash flow areas of the US (Kansas City, Houston, Jacksonville, etc...). I live in Germantown, MD and there are no cash flow properties in this area, we don't get anywhere close to the 1% rule here. However, buying properties in cities that would require a flight to get there seems very risky since I am physically so far away.

So I have a few questions:

1) How do the professionals in this industries ensure that they are purchasing investments in areas where vacancies rates are low? Given that not everyone lives in a great cash flowing area.

2) If I am buying strictly for cash flow, should I be worried about appreciation or depreciation on the properties? It seems like most of the areas that are good cash flowing areas do not appreciate as much.

3) Is 400K enough to achieve my goal of 8-12K passive income every month with buy and holds or should I pursue a different path?

Also, I would love to connect with agents/investors in my area (20871) if you are out there!

I am new to this, so I am completely okay with harsh replies :-)

Cheers,

Nick G.