My plan for investing $400k

[Keaton Smith]

Hi there! I am blessed to currently have $400k cash to invest in real estate deals. I am looking to invest nationally (remotely). I have a running plan but I am just starting out in REI and am not interested in moving forward unwisely. Here is my current rough outline of a plan, please consider letting me know where I'm right and wrong.
I plan on:

Focusing on monthly cash flow.

Hunting for deals remotely in Austin, TX, Fayetteville, NC, Fargo, ND, Columbus, OH, Sioux Falls, SD, Killeen, TX, Manchester, NH, Bakersfield, CA, Fresno, CA, and Clarksville, TN-KY.

Purchasing the property in cash (as an incentive to discount), rehabing (as needed), renting it out, then securing lending after it is occupied (currently I have no debt but also no loan-worthy income, so would likely need the property to have existing rent before financing through a bank).

Using property managers

Looking to have a CoC return of at least 15%, so that annually the $400k invested will make at least $60k gross.

I know each deal is different and this is a rough outline, but this is the general direction I am heading. I don't want to miss anything, so what do you all think? Is this the most optimized strategy to achieve strong cash flow?

Thanks so much for reading!

[Chris Phillips]

@Keaton Smith I wish you luck. My wife and I were in a similar situation a little over a year ago. We had just under $300,000 in cash. We ended up purchasing a 4 unit apartment building and a single family home in rural Northern Arkansas (total of roughly $130,000 cash invested). We are getting $2,025 per month in rent. But the trade off is these places will never appreciate in value and are sometimes hard to find new tenants.

Cash flow is extremely important, but looking back, we do kind of regret the apartment purchase because it will never appreciate. It’s a 100 year old building (originally a church and was remodeled into apartments in the 90’s). And it’s not a terribly nice building. But it does produce a lot of cash flow. So it’s give and take.

All I will say is be careful. Especially as an out of state investor you could get into a property with unforeseen issues or that won’t appreciate. Best of luck!