Investing in Bremerton, WA?

[Erik Osland]

Hi,

I'm new to this site and real estate investing in general. I have been poking around here to get a sense of what people think about this. I found some older posts, but I'm not sure if they're relevant anymore.

I live in Seattle and I'm looking for a long-term investment--not flipping or even looking for immediate cash flow. I'm comfortable putting up to roughly 100k down--which doesn't get you much in the Seattle area. That said, I'd rather have the property close by so I can swing by to check up on any issues or do minor repairs. I will hire a property management company, but I don't necessarily want to rely on them for everything. I considered Tacoma, but the properties out there tend to be expensive, and rent isn't exceptional from what I've seen. SFHs usually only rent for a few hundred dollars over the mortgage with 20 percent down. And I'm unlikely to find a multi-family for 100k down.

So, I've been looking into Bremerton, WA. There are occasionally multi-family homes available for about $400k that have rent in the range of $3k+ for all units combined. I'm having a little trouble tracking down property value and rent trajectories. From what I could gather both are increasing as is most of the greater Seattle area. On paper, it seems to check most of the boxes for me.

Does anyone know of major downsides with this market?