What can you do while waiting to save for a down payment?

[Andrew Dale]

Am just getting used to the BP forums, this is an awesome website! Anyways, I have a question about patience in real estate investing.

I am interested in purchasing a SFH out of state as an investment property, and I found that for investment properties, usually a 15-20% down payment is required. I've set a maximum price of $200,000 on a house. A down payment of 15% would be $30,000. It's going to take me till mid 2022 (a year and a half from now) to save up that much. What really can you do during this timeframe? Talking to lenders now would be inaccurate for that much time down the road. And talking to real estate agents feel's like it would be pointless now, due to nothing really able to get moving.

What would any of you do if you had this much time to wait and save?