Should we buy a house now or Later?

[Cory Forsythe]

My wife and I have been wanting to buy a single family house for a while now. We are just sick of renting and it sounds like a great investment. The only reason we haven’t is because we are going to be moving away to another state in a year and a half. For my wife’s education. We will be returning 3 years later. So, we’ve been thinking about buying a house, living in it for a year, rent the house out when we move away and have a rental property management take over while we are out of state. The house would be located in city that has a university, so we are wanting to rent to maybe grad students or single families. I have absolutely no experience in real estate and neither does my wife. I know investing in real estate is risky and you have to take risk. So, I just want to know if this was a crazy idea. Especially on our first property adventure. And maybe we should just wait until we move back to the area and then start buying property. I eventually would like to own as many rental properties as I can.