How did YOU prepare to become an out-of-state investor?

[Chris Low]

We're getting ready to invest outside our home base market and have been looking at college towns out of state, primarily at the multi-family market for by-and-hold investing. If you're an out-of-state investor, I'd be curious to know what you did to prepare. What was your criteria? What kind of market research did you do before going there to look at properties? What order of steps did you take to create your network and build your team? I think we're being pretty thorough, but I'm sure the BP community has steps we haven't thought of and creative ideas to consider. Thanks for the help!