International Newbie Originally from Iowa

[Jason Mott]

Good morning! My name is Jason Mott, and I am currently teaching music at an international school in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates with my wife. We previously lived in Shanghai, China for four years, but we are from Iowa and spend our entire summers there. We love Iowa, and I am thinking about trying to fit in RAGBRAI this year as I also love riding my bicycle (a little bit difficult here in the desert, but not impossible).

We are thoroughly enjoying our international lifestyle, but we are without the major benefits that come with being a public school teacher in the United States. We have been exploring different ways to make sure that we are someday prepared for retirement, and real estate investing is something that we are very interested in. To be specific, we are interested in purchasing a house in Iowa that we will rent out. I would be very interested in expanding that to several properties in the future, but we really want to start with one property and go from there as we learn more. 

I have been doing a lot of reading on this, and have recently discovered this website. I am not always very good about maintaining an online presence, but I have made it my 2018 goal to do it here! We are worried about our ability to make money due to the fact that we are still living out of the country. We will have to take care of all of this business during the summer, and then likely hire a property manager so that our potential tenants are well taken care of. I am interested in finding out how to make this possible, as I know it will provide unique challenges. We are targeting Iowa because the property that will be purchasing needs to be something that we would potentially live in later down the road.

Looking forward to getting to know this community.