Los Angeles New Member - Interested in Out of State Buy & Hold

[Daniel Smilansky]

Hi Everyone,

I am new to BiggerPockets, and like many others, I have fallen in love with the lively community and wealth of information. Everyone seems to be very helpful and I hope I can pay it forward!

I ended up finding bigger pockets through google and I immediately read the beginner's guide to real estate investing. From there, I created a plan, and my goal is to purchase rental properties in order to implement a buy & hold strategy in secondary and tertiary cities that are rapidly growing.

From 9 - 5 I work as a Technical Recruiter and am actually transitioning into web development after taking courses for the past six months. Motivated by the desire to escape the rat race and fired by entrepreneurial spirit, I want to hit the ground running with my first property soon.

Being from Los Angeles, there are not many great buy & hold properties in my immediate area, and I am open to doing heavy research on out-of-area properties. Through many of the posts on here, I am targeting areas like Charlotte, Dallas, Houston or Memphis.

Not sure if it is inappropriate to share finances here, but I have 40k saved up and another 15k in retirement accounts at my disposal. I also have 780+ credit. Can anyone suggest markets to explore? I believe I will start contacting real estate agents in a few markets to see what is out there, but any referrals to reputable ones would be more than welcomed! I would love to connect with anyone in in the LA area as well.

Also, I would be happy to exchange expertise as I am heavily involved in the tech space and can offer quite a bit of advice in that area. Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Daniel