FIRST TIME INVESTOR - Canadian looking to invest in US rentals

[Andy Meyers]

Hello Everyone,

I am a Canadian looking to buy and rent some property in the US.

Particularly in Florida. Clear water, Miami, Sarasota, Orlando, those types of places. I might consider Arizona and Texas too.

At this point I'm really confused.

What do I do to get started? Are there special websites that I should use?
Should I team up with a seasoned investor/expert?

Living in Canad limits one's access to Florida but I can make a trip down there and stay there for a few months if need be.

Can you point me in the right direction?

I really appreciate all the help you kind folks can give me.

[Joel Owens]

We are nowhere near a workout of residential foreclosures.

Nationally banks have 300,000 residential reo's with another 700,000 bank owned but not yet listed for sale.

About another 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 residential properties in pre-foreclosure that are short sales or are just 30 days behind all the way to having failed trial loan mods.

Most of these properties will be foreclosed as they work through the system or failed loan mod to BK to eventually foreclosure.

So in my opinion we are about 3 years away to work through most of the residential stuff.You have to remember that distress is not evenly spread out across the U.S.

There are markets that have continued to go up and have zero to little foreclosures.Then you have the speculative markets that are first to rise and first to fall with wild swings in fluctuation.Then you have market that dip and recover but the decline is not as severe and is spread out over time.

Whether you wait could depend on your strategy to buy properties.If you are long term buy and hold properties might dip a little before hitting bottom but that gain might be offset by higher future interest rates.

If you are paying all cash then waiting and having the interest rate climb by 200 basis points but buying for 50k less might be a winning combo.

You have to really explain your game plan more.Investing is not a one size fits all approach.