Newb/Questions, Out-of-State investing + Team

[Jacob Rascon]

Hello BP,

Thanks for taking the time, I had a few questions as a first-timer.

My Goal: To invest into rental properties for long-term cash flow.

I live in Cali, but after running the numbers on numerous houses here it has become obvious that this area is not necessarily ideal at the moment, never mind the other legal issues. So, I want to invest in Texas, primarily with owner financing. I have ran several single-family homes and found them to be quite ideal in terms of return using the calculators here.

My first question is;

How do you manage to work a deal with an out-of-state house?

Texas, is definitely not a quick drive for me and I would rather not have to fly every time I want to buy there. Do you have any experience or thoughts on this?

Next, is the lack of a team on my part.

I am aware there are several types of people I want to be in contact with, especially because I want to go the route of having my houses under land trusts (managed by) LLC (managed by) Living trusts. Are there commonly utilized Lawyers & Accountants that specialize in these things used by the BP community?

Thanks again

[Elenis Camargo]

Hey Jacob! I was in exactly the same boat as you. I'm from South Florida but live in Brooklyn NY as of 2 years ago. My husband and I wanted to invest but NY is crazy expensive, like Cali. We decided to invest in North Florida. Luckily I knew a friend there that's a realtor now and she went and viewed properties for us, sent us pictures/videos, scoped out the area and we purchased one of the ones she saw. Of course we did other research on the area and analysis on the deal. We never saw the house in person. We just finished doing a rehab on it because the tenant abandoned it and left it a mess. I'll be writing a post on this soon! I met someone on BP that's a contractor and he did the rehab, again all sight unseen. Before North Florida, we were going to invest in our old college town and we just looked up realtors and found one we liked. I am positive you can do the same! Maybe just look for properties yourself and call the listing agent yourself. The listing agent can represent both parties and maybe you like one of them enough to be your realtor for future properties. I don't recommend flying to Texas every time. It'll cost you way more money that you could be putting into a deal instead. I was super tempted to fly to Florida when my tenant abandoned but it was better to spend those few hundred bucks on the rehab instead.

If you're serious about out of state investing, I highly recommend this book. It's a BP book but I got it on Amazon. The author lives in Cali and did all his flips and rehab/hold investments out of state without ever stepping foot in the properties: https://www.biggerpockets.com/store/long-distance-...

I hope this help and don't hesitate to ask questions! I'm pretty new in real estate myself but have been managing the property from out of state and even went through an eviction and rehab 5 months in so I've learned a lot these past few months  :)