New Member Headed to Ft. Bragg and Eager to Invest

[Shaquille Turner]

Hello Bigger Pockets!

My name is Shaquille Turner. I am a recently married Army Lieutenant and will be moving to Fayetteville, North Carolina in January. I am here on BiggerPockets guided by a recommendation from The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and low) Money Down, by Brandon Turner.

I have not yet invested in real estate, but I want to purchase my first property within the next year. My plan is to use the VA Loan to purchase an owner occupied, multi-family investment property. I'd appreciate advice from anyone who has already taken that path (or a path similar to it): is there anything I should be looking out for? Where is a good place to search for housing in the Fayetteville area? Are there any property managers that you'd recommend? Is it wise to get a property manager for an owner occupied investment property, or should I do it on my own?

Any advice would be much appreciated! 

I look forward to the feedback. Glad I found such an awesome forum. 

[Alexander Felice]

You should be able to buy equity pretty easily if you get a REO. Most of our neighborhoods are old and well established (well, one's with foreclosures are mostly). So just want to make sure you buy and rehab low enough to match the comps. I think you'll find it hard pressed to oversell on comps even with a nice rehab. Our market is SATURATED with flippers and many are doing really nice rehabs, and still selling at neighborhood market comp prices. So again, you can buy equity, but I think you'll find it hard to go over well established comps.

You want to make sure you have a solid plan for what you'll do with the equity though. a 30k spread on a 120k house SOUNDS good, but a 80% cash out eats all that up. Just match your purchase with your leverage plan. If you're looking to capitalize heavily on equity, just make sure there is great spread to do a cash-out. You won't find any appreciation in Fayetteville so if you don't buy equity, you likely won't have any.  

Also, there are a ton of fayetteville people on this board, I'm sure some of them disagree with me, so take that into consideration.