New member from Bay area CA

[Raghuveer M.]

Hello All,

I am Raghu and currently in bay area. Sorry about the long introduction but I just wanted to get my thoughts out there. I have been reading the beginner guide and lots of articles and decided to join and ask some questions along the way.

I am renting now as home prices are so crazy here. I want to invest in some rental properties and my goal is to get a cash flow of $1k per month via real estate by buying either 1 property for $100k or 2 properties for $50k each or a multi family property for $100k. I would like rent to be $2k total from the $100k invested to satisfy the 2% and 50% rule so that I get to have a cash flow of $1k. I have saved up $20k for a downpayment and I have another $10k which I hope to use for either rehab + other closing costs. I can raise another $5k with a little difficulty if needed.

I guess I will need to look out of state and that is what scares me as I do not know how I would be able to figure out a good deal from here. Most of the deals seem to be by buying at auction or foreclosure and rehab it and then rent it out.

If there are suggestions on areas I should focus on that would be great? I saw Memphis, Atlanta, few cities in Texas, Altamonte spring near Orlando have very good cap rates and lots of options for all budgets. I looked at Zillow and redfin and the property prices are all over the place from $10k to $300k.

My biggest concern is that if I find a good place to buy by looking at all the listings, how do I go about purchasing it without looking at the property? I could fly out but most good deals might be done by the time I get to fly as I work 5 days and can only fly on weekends. Even after seeing some properties there may be no way to know if I would win the bids. So I would need to do so many offers and there is no way to look at each of the property, the rentability and other aspects remotely and would be fully dependent on a real estate agent. I am not sure if the agent can look at the property and give me a proper judgement on whether to buy it or not. So any suggestions on how to do this would be very welcome!