Should I invest in syndication or...

[Elizabeth M Williams]

Hi all-

As retirement inches nearer, I'm finding myself spending a LOT of time on planning, and am determined to make our money work hard for us. We live in Dubai, planning to move to either US or maybe Brisbane, still undecided, as tons of factors that play into it. 

I'm American, 51, hubby is Australian, 56. We live in Dubai. We have a house in Oregon with $200k equity, rented at $2200 per month, $400 positive cash flow, and planning to refi and cash out $100k to buy a few more houses. Because I live here, the refi has been tricky, but am told by Dec I can do this, so will save on interest, and the house is in a steadily appreciating market.  Also have $60k now to play with, and another $70k by July 2021, saved at the rate of $7k per month, all ready to go into real estate, and not including the refi cash. So roughly $230 to invest in real estate in the next year. I can also pull out some 401k money, but prefer not to.

The plan has been to buy some single or multi family homes in the Rochester, NY area, as that's where my family is and I know the market fairly well. But, there are limited opportunities for equity uplift in terms of appreciation, unless I get lucky and am patient till the right deal comes along. And I am slightly hesitant to do massive rehabbing from out of the country. So, I was hoping to get a nice sfh in a great school district, put maybe $10k of work into it from here, and rent it out, should get around 9-10% COC and some appreciation, maybe 2-3% a year, plus a slight uplift on the cosmetic fixes. We could buy 4 - 5 houses under this model.

But I'm wondering if it makes more sense to sink some cash instead into a well reputed syndication, aiming for a 3-4 year exit, and derive the same tax benefits & appreciation without being a long distance landlord.

We ultimately want to be able to move back, at least to the US, to do some more deals actively, but my husband won't be able to be sponsored into a new job, as that is very rare, so will get his green card while there, ie, can't really count on a job until after we get there, but to be honest, we'd rather have set up some deals so we could just have a model where we can not have to worry about him getting a job at all, and working for ourselves in real estate investment.

And in the meantime, we are also considering moving ultimately to Brisbane, but we can't build that sort of portfolio up there like we can in the US, plus I'm not familiar with the market/taxes/ways to do deals there like I am in the US. 

I should add one more detail. While living here, my husband is able to benefit from 0 capital gains on earnings, so, for example, we could instead put this all into an offshore investment account, and sell off everything prior to leaving here, zero gains. BUT, the market is making me pretty nervous, so I prefer to put the money to work in real estate, which I think is generally a far better safe haven. We are still putting money into the market, but far more allocated for real estate.

Any thoughts much appreciated!