Long Distance Land Lording

[Trevor Lohman]

Hi Everyone,

I am fully prepared to take some heat for asking this question, and recognize many of the problems with long distance income property ownership and investing in a "network" but wanted to ask anyway.

I'm 24 and spend probably about 50-60 hours a week working. I'm making what I consider good money (roughly 150 thousand a year pre tax). While I don't necessarily love my job, I don't see myself having the courage to quit and jump into real estate at any major capacity in the next five years. I'm at a time in my life when I'm saving for all kinds of things (wedding, new car, investing) and feel much more comfortable with what is a reasonably steady income (I know no job is guaranteed) I am not a huge fan of leverage, or debt of any kind, which is why I'm putting away money like crazy. I think within this year I would have the money to buy a lower end house in a few other parts of the country that seem to make a lot of sense to me. I do not however see myself having a tremendous amount of time to manage these properties though.

I am wondering if anyone has heard much about or invested in Jason Hartman's platinum properties network. I have listened to his podcast for quite a while, and his investing principles seem to strike me as being inline with bigger pockets philosophy, and my own philosophy. His network does not strike me as guru-ie (is that a word?) but at the same time it is an investment network managed by someone else, which I know many investors would likely call a suckers bet.

Does anyone have any experience with Platinum Properties? Or does anyone want to tell me how crazy I am for considering it lol? At this point it is either get involved in something like this, get some skin in the game, and learn from my experience, or just save my money away for the next five years until I'm at a point where I feel more comfortable ratcheting back from work, and try to become a part time buy and hold investor on my own.

Either way I plan on getting involved in managing my own real estate down the road, but thought this may be a viable way to get started and learn in the mean time.

What do you guys think? Thanks for the help!

Trevor