some advice would be appreciated

[Steven Kennerley]

Hi I'm Steven 

Im currently writing this from New Zealand but will be moving with my family to Washingtion State this month. Im fortunate to have sold our family home in a very good market and this has helped us have some capital to look at investing in RE. I am interested in buy and hold probably SFR's possibly small multi families.

I have been doing as much homework as I can over the last few months and this site has been amazing for that. There is still so much I dont know and some guidance would be awesome.

A couple questions I have are when putting together a group of professionals to help set up an LLC and assist with insurance, taxes, accounting etc. do I look locally and try find people myself or do I just look for referrals from sources like BP? Is it better to have them local to contact?

Another question I had is the area Im moving to seems to be a bit expensive and from what I have learnt so far probably not the best for cash flow, which is what we are looking for initially. I have heard a lot of talk about RE in the mid west and looked at some properties on this site. So the question I have is how do I make that decision. I have a basic understanding of how to analyze a property but I guess my concern is I dont know the area myself and I dont want to be stuck with a property in a D area with high vacancy rates and not ideal tennants.

Im moving to a small town north of Bellingham WA.

Any advice would be much appreciated.