Should I consider investing out-of-state with another investor?

[Lucas Mills]

I'm looking at and debating the potential risk/reward of investing in flips out-of-state.

I have a relatively small amount of capital, about 30k. I am aware of a certain investor in AR who has her own rehab team, etc. and says that I can invest 20k-30k (sort of partial financing) and expect a 25% to 30% return. She states that flips there generally make about 20k after expenses.

So, this theoretically means that I could turn that 30k into 60k over the course of a year, if I repeat the process every 3-4 months. To me, this seems like a good way to quickly gain capital for the purpose of acquiring buy and hold units (long-term, passive income being my ultimate goal). Sure, I could try to do flips in my own market, but, I don't have any experience and I know that flips don't generally make that much here.

So is this a good idea? Any reason I should not invest in this kind of a model? To me it sounds like a great, passive way to quickly gain capital, and as I get more, I can fund larger projects for greater return.

However, I have some concerns. Does this person really do what they say they're doing? Does their business actually exist? Etc. So if this is a decent way to invest my limited capital, how might I go about verifying everything, as much as reasonably possible?