Hello from Israel

[Anne M.]

Hi everyone. I'm Anne and I live in Israel, not far from Tel Aviv with my husband and our two boys.

We love traveling and have traveled in the US & Canada for a total of 12 months in the past 7 years, in 4 separate road trips. We've visited 44 states so far and hoping to add Alaska to our list next summer.

We're in our forties and so far invested only in the stock market, mostly via index funds. Our portfolio leaves something to be desired in terms of average annual yield (we invested too much in China and South America a decade ago, I'm afraid). Currently looking into real estate investments in the US.

We really like the US. It's our favorite travel destination. We love the country, the landscape and the people. There's a lot of information available online about everything and everywhere, so that makes things easier. 

We've decided to give this a try. We have a friend who's a real estate broker. She's based in Israel but flies over to her markets 4 times a year. She works in two markets: Atlanta, GA & Memphis, TN. The basic model is buying from wholesalers, renovating as may be needing and then selling to investors as rental properties. The advantage of working with her is that she knows these areas well and has a reliable team on the ground. 

So, there you have it. If this can make us a profit of 5% a year, we'll be happy campers. Investing about 70K in cash at this point (we can't get a US mortgage yet and we have the money in cash anyway). IF we see this is working, then we'll see what our next step may be.

Any thoughts, tips or ideas on these markets welcome. She's a pro, so we're going to have a close mentor (we're paying her as well, of course) but I always like hearing from more people. 

Looking forward to getting to know more people here. Will be cruising the boards, blogs and podcasts to learn more.