New NYC Investor looking to get started investing out of state

[Louis Gaeta]

Hello Everyone!

I'm a new investor looking to get familiar with the site and all of you and begin my real estate journey this year. I'm primarily interested in buying and holding properties and building a passive income through rent and appreciation, but I hope to open myself up to other forms of real estate investing such as flipping in the future. I have read through Long-Distance Real Estate Investing by David
Greene and want to adopt a similar approach in my investing career. My goal for 2021 is to successfully finance, rehab, and rent out at least one remote property as well as begin to build the relationships necessary to do so (agent, property manager, contractors, etc.). I'm not so interested in striking gold right away but more to familiarize myself with the process so that I can continue to iterate on it and get over the fears and analysis paralysis I'm currently feeling. I work full-time as a web developer and plan to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Part of my fears come from speaking to my family and others around me about investing and hearing advice and approaches that
seem to be very different from what I've learned on my own so far and different from what appeals to me about investing in the first place. I've been advised against using property management and against buying properties in locations that I don't plan on visiting or checking on in-person. The book I've read provided good reasoning as to why these should not be major concerns. While it makes a lot of sense to me, my current mentor-ship has little knowledge of it and since I haven't been able to put these practices into action myself, a bit of hesitation is beginning to set in. I intend to push on regardless and would like to hear if any of you have good or bad experiences with this approach. As a start I've been going over notes I took while reading, making a habit out of reading through BiggerPockets and other investing sites a part of my daily routine, and started looking at listings for properties and try my hand and at calculating potential profitability for them in my spare time. Some articles I've read on here have brought Cleveland, OH to my attention and I'm very interested in looking further into there. I'm mainly looking into multi-family homes. Does anyone have any insight/recommendations/advice about investing there or anywhere else as a start? Also calling out to any investor-friendly agents that work in the area! I'm interested to hear your thoughts and get to know some of you. Thanks for reading.

[Trevor Ewen]

@Louis Gaeta

Welcome! I agree with @Aubrey Tatarowicz. The first one is the hardest, gets easier from there.

I started investing out-of-state in 2014. Typical of cashflow investors, I targeted markets with higher rent / value ratios and decent regulation for landlords. As of this year, the strategy has performed well. Key thing is to buy with a margin of safety and understand that state regulation is not likely to favor the smaller landlords like yourself / myself.

Decent management will be your secret weapon. A lot of people love to brag about the extra percent they made on purchase, but it doesn't matter if you can't keep the place occupied. Aim for tenant stability and buy assets that are relatively stable. Managing a rehab long distance is not fun.