Vegas, Bakersfield or Phoenix for Buy & Hold?

[Daniel Smilansky]

Hi Everyone,

I am new to BiggerPockets, and like many others, I have fallen in love with the lively community and wealth of information. Everyone seems to be very helpful and I hope I can pay it forward! After paying off lots of debt and establishing myself financially, I began exploring the stock market last year, and I quickly found out that the stock market enables the rich to get richer, yet does not service those looking to build wealth nearly as well as I thought.

Aside from my own tech entrepreneurial adventures (I am a web developer), I wanted to give real estate a shot and see what it was all about. A month ago, I stumbled upon the Vegas AirBnB article that went viral and I became even more intrigued (http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bought-apartment-rent-airbnb/).

I ended up finding bigger pockets through google and I immediately read the beginner's guide to real estate investing. From there, I created a plan, and my goal is to purchase rental properties in order to implement a buy & hold strategy in secondary and tertiary cities that are rapidly growing.

Being from Los Angeles, there are not many great buy & hold properties in my immediate area, and I am open to doing heavy research on out-of-area properties. Although I am not opposed to areas like Charlotte, Dallas, Houston or Memphis, I would prefer somewhere closer, if possible, such Phoenix, Las Vegas or Bakersfield.

Not sure if it is inappropriate to share finances here, but I have 40k saved up and another 15k in retirement accounts at my disposal. I also have 780+ credit. Can anyone suggest markets to explore? My research has been limited to Zillow thus far since I don't have access to the MLS. Also, can anyone suggest ways for discovering properties? I believe I will start contacting real estate agents in a few markets to see what is out there, but any referrals to reputable ones would be more than welcomed!

Also, I would be happy to exchange expertise as I am heavily involved in the tech space and can offer quite a bit of advice in that area. Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Daniel