Newbie from Midwest Illinois. Currently in Northern Virginia.

[Tim Davis]

Hello everyone.  I am just now starting to get into real estate. My job is mobile, which forces me to move around every few years.  There is good and bad to this.  Good:  I can buy a house as a personal home at a lower interest rate that I will live in for a few years before moving on and renting the house out.  Bad: I will have homes in different markets, with different property managers, that I have no opportunities to check in on.

I fell into my first real estate property.  The plan was to buy the house, live in it for 3 years and then sell it.  Three months after purchasing the house, I got orders to go to another location.  Eight months after purchasing the home, I was in D.C. and decided to rent the property out. 

I have since done research and a ton of reading and now see this is an opportunity to build my real estate properties through my moves.

Does anyone have any similar experiences or does anyone have any thoughts on if it is smart to buy/possess several single properties in several different locations.

My other option is to start investing in multi-family rentals back in my home town where I hope to retire in less than a decade.  However, I will not receive the loan rates as a personal home.

I'm very excited about this website and I look forward to the amount of knowledge and experience that is available for me to learn from.  I have about 20 months until my next move.

[Elizabeth Colegrove]

@James Wise

Thank you for the shout!

My husbands is active duty military! We bought our first house in Virginia Beach. We fixed it up and than rented it out! We have since bought a house at every duty station possible :) We also buy pure properties. We own in 3 different states and we have only been investing for 3 year :) I look forward to seeing how many different states and cities we own when we retire :)

The only thing that everyone agrees on here is real estate. Beyond that everyone has their own niche! Check out the podcasts, blogs and forums. If you want an awesome (biased because it was me) podcast on transient investing you might enjoy my podcast 103. If you see a forum post that tickles your fancy you might want to check out their signature. Many including myself, have written on our specialties so there is even more experience and information there.