Consolidating in one area or building teams in multiple areas

[Cody Maheu]

As the title suggests, I'm curious of BiggerPockets thoughts of confining in one geographic location or branching out into multiple areas.

Let me unpack our situation. Currently I work with 2 other investors and we just bought our first out of state duplex in Maine! We still have funds to look into our next asset but it seems there isn't too many deals in our market (or our network isn't too big yet). We are building processes to build teams effectively and we have learned a lot from acquiring this first duplex. We have got our process down with our realtor and what we expect. We are just wrapping up our property management interviews and will building a pipeline for our team to work together. While all that is in the works, we want to extend our network so we will be starting a virtual meetup in Maine next month as well.

With all that being said, what do you guys think about branching out into another area so we have a bigger pool to choose from? We just purchased our first duplex this month so should we wait to see how this goes and scan the area for the next few months or should we take this time to build a second team while still analyzing deals in Maine? I believe we can strengthen relationships by building up our portfolio in Maine but we can also jumpstart our wealth by getting more deals with an extended web. What do y'all think?