I apologize if I come off as ignorant. I'm still learning as much as possible but I'm in school full time so it's been a slow(er) roll with a lot of my time going towards studying.

A quick rundown of my wife and I's situation and then on to my question. If you don't want the background skip down to the next paragraph. We have $8000 saved in cash right now and the only debt we have is her car payment which is low interest (5%) and is sitting at $14k right now (we pay $400/month on it which is $100 over the minimum payment but it still allows us to save a lot into our savings accounts). I'll be getting a pre tax bonus of $10k when I finish my school around July (so post tax probably around $8k). Other than the bonus and our tax return we're saving about 37% of our income throughout my TSP and our HYSA. I actually came to these forums and got turned on to the podcast from the choose FI podcast. Our goal with real estate is to own rentals from the different areas we get stationed and have cash flow and a growing net worth. We eventually want to move back to San Diego when I get out and depending on the market there would like to invest there as well (that's at least 10 years down the line though). Mainly I want to become financially independent so that my wife and I don't depend on a job. If an emergency happens or we decide we want to take time to travel or anything, I want to be able to do so. I don't want the quality of our lives to be tied to how much we work. Obviously we still plan on working (and we understand real estate is a lot of work), but I don't want to HAVE to work for someone else. The way we see real estate is we're in charge of our schedule and we're working for us, not someone else.

We're both 22 y/o.

So onto my question:

When I finish school here there are a few places I could be stationed. I get to fill out a "dream sheet" so I have some say in where I go (some). The places that are normally available are: Pensacola, Florida (where we're at now), Fort Meade, MD, and San Antonio, TX (Oahu, HI is normally there too but we don't want to live in HI. The orders are 4 years at a time.

We have access to the VA home loan which is a bonus and both of our credit scores are 725+. We're really new to this and don't know much about different markets. Obviously we don't plan on filling out the dream sheet solely based on the housing markets but it's a big factor. Do you guys have any information on the areas I listed above? Not asking for deals specifically but general information about their real estate market and other things that would impact home buying/ home ownership/ owning rentals. We're wanting to either house-hack by buying a duplex or buy a fixer upper to live in while we fix it and then once it's fixed up rent it and buy another fixer upper. The other option is to just buy a ready to rent home which is less hassle but I don't feel it's as good of a deal as buying a home that needs work. We're both pretty handy and I'll be INCONUS 90% of the time so we will both be able to do the work.

Thank you guys so much for the help! My wife and I are really looking forward to jumping in on this journey with all of you! If there's anything I need to be clearer on just let me know and I'll clear up any confusion!

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Young military couple wanting to start investing in real estate

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