Need An Investment Plan

[Jason Emery]

I'm back from a hiatus and trying to formulate a real estate investment plan.  Still very new to this but I've been doing a lot of reading in the interim.  I have a job currently as a game programmer in Seattle, which keeps me very busy.  I've been investing in stocks, which has been okay, but it's increasingly risky as the market seems to be saturating on imagined returns.

My goals are to be able to afford a much better home than the condo I currently own and to visit ancient spots in Europe to inspire an eventual writing career (or similar) once I have enough to not need a full time job.  In addition, I want to be able to help people I know locally, setting money aside for that proverbial 'money pit'.

But to do that, I think I should start investing to build that residual income & savings instead of blowing it all on a home.  If I lost my career somehow, right now (imagine a bicycling accident!), I'd have a hard time making payments on the high home prices in this area!  Right now I am very stable and living way under my means, while I have the condo over half paid off.

A lot of what I'm seeing here is nudging me in the direction of turnkey rentals.  This is mainly because I don't have an enormous amount of time to find and manage properties and my risk threshold is low as I've not done this before.  One upside I recently discovered is that the tax benefits on my salary sound enormously beneficial while I'm still in a high tax bracket.

Let's say I could theoretically save up around 250k to invest.  Where would you begin?  Would you start down the road of some of these all-in-one companies that sell and rent for you in, for example, Ohio?  Do people find it unnerving to invest remotely in properties they will never see?

Just as importantly, is there some completely different angle I might consider as a new investor?