Hire Property Walker for Long-Distance Investing

[Dalton Dellinger]

Hello BP!

I work full-time and recently have had personal obligations that have come up that have put a hold and time-constraint on my REI processes. I have been doing some thinking and right now, the largest bottleneck in my business is me.

I invest in a small city in Southern Indiana that is approximately 45 minutes away from me (one way) and in a different time zone (they are an hour ahead). The town has a decent amount of inventory where I know deals could be made, however I can not be there to physically look at all of them. I have done basic analyses using numbers from flips we've done in the past, however I need to see the house and it's mechanicals to be more accurate.

I had one thought: put a post on Facebook to ask if anyone would be interested in being a house-walker for me. Essentially, I would give them a checklist I have already created, and train them what to look for when viewing a property on my behalf. They would take pictures of the house and walkthrough videos as well as gather the serial numbers of the AC, WH, and furnace. They would measure floor square footages so I would know kitchen is 150 sq ft, bedrooms are a total of 400 sq ft, etc. 

I have recently reread David Greene's "Long-Distance Real Estate Investing" and this is similar to what his contractors and/or agents do (minus the checklist). Does this sound like a viable idea? What have any of you done in your businesses to achieve the same result I'm trying to achieve?

Thanks,

[Aaron Van Curen]

Sounds interesting and quite doable. You could potentially pay someone like that per site visit or hourly. If you have obligations restricting you from doing the work yourself maybe it is time to look into a property manager that can help you find and inspect properties for you.