What more can I do before moving to another state and investing?

[Alex Harper]

I came across BP a few months ago and I'm incredibly excited to get started. My girlfriend is totally on board and we would be doing this together in a year once she graduates from grad school. We are currently renting and want to make our first investment owner-occupied and house hack. We want to do everything we can to be ready to jump in headfirst when we move. 

My question is, what more can we do ahead of time? 

So far we are:

• Reading books
  • - Rental Property Investing
  • - Estimating Rehab Costs
  • - The BRRRR Book
  • - Rich Dad Poor Dad
• - Listening to the BP Podcast, (and the BP rookie podcast) almost daily
• - Reading the forums
• - Using the rental property calculator to analyze properties in our target area
• - Looking at listings on realtor.com and Zillow for our target area
• - Analyzing sold properties, Analyzing on the market properties
• - refining our criteria for what would make a good deal for us

We'd like to do more, but it feels kind of crazy to start reaching out to agents, wholesalers, contractors, lenders, etc this far in advance of buying. Also We've only visited the move location once before and we weren't scoping out neighborhoods while we were there. Is there anything else we should be doing? When is the right time to reach out to people on the ground to get the buying process started?