Military family starting to invest in real estate

[Athena Cave]

Hi everyone,

My husband is an active duty Naval officer and I am a full time risk management analyst at a financial institution. We are in the middle of relocating to Portsmouth, NH. My husband will be there in a week while I will be there at the end of April. For the last 2 months, I have been listening to BPs, Active Duty Passive Income, Real Estate Rookie in addition to reading real estate blogs, personal finance books, real estate books to submerge myself into real estate investing while my husband was on a short deployment. After he came back a couple of weeks ago, we have been actively searching for a 3 br/2ba homes (looking to house hack) and an investment property (found a couple of Multi-family homes in the area). We are planning to use the VA on our primary residence and potentially a conventional loan (unless there are other options to consider) for the investment property given that we have enough down payment & extra cash reserves to cover additional expenses. Our timeline is very tight on our primary residence because we are going to rent a month to month furnished apartment/house during the transition period while our furniture & belongings are in storage. Here's our plan of actions for this week: 1. reach out to a few realtors on BPs, ADPI, etc who have experience in real estate investing to represent us in the buying process. 2. apply for pre-approvals from various banks (big & small) 3. once we find a few realtors who understand our goals, we will set up viewing appointments 4. use the Real Estate property calculator on BPs to determine if the purchase is a good deal or not. We understand that the market is extremely competitive at the moment, so we would appreciate any advice and suggestions. Thank you!