Trying to get into investing before leaving my current gig

[Gabe J Schwarz]

Hey folks,

Sorry for the rather broad discussion - I've got a bit of an odd situation right now which is rather time-sensitive, so I wanted to get this out sooner (even in a more broad & vague form) rather than later.

I've decided to quit my relatively high paying job in the near future to travel for awhile (couple years, visiting home ever few months or so) and possibly even retire early. I have significant amount of money invested in stock right now and reasonably trust the average index fund return rate of ~9.5% to continue (of course, been getting much higher than that the last couple years, but we're in a bit of a bubble). I've got other plans under way, so I don't have a ton of flexibility to prolong my employment to give more room here. I live quite modestly relative to my income and I'm young enough that I'm fine jumping into a job again if I need to, so I've got a pretty high risk tolerance (so long as it has comparable reward potential, of course).

I've been planning on just making money off the investment income, but I've always been rather interested in real estate investing and it occurred to me recently that I will probably have an easier time getting a mortgage now with my income than I will in a couple months when I don't have an active income. So, I'm very interested in prospect of using a portion of my net worth to invest in real estate now before this opportunity is lost (i.e. from not being able to get a mortgage, or at least as good of one, post-quitting)*.

So, I'm looking to try to acquire my first rental property during the week of 7/3-7/10 - which is when I'll be in the area I'm looking to invest in, and be living long-term starting in August (aside from traveling 90% of the year).

I've watched a handful of YT videos and read some blogs on real estate investing in the last day, but I'm looking for any quick advice that might make a big difference. My current thought is to look for a small multi-family unit to get started; I'm looking around a cost that is around 60% of my net worth in full - but of course, I'd like to leverage a mortgage so the majority of my net worth can remain invested elsewhere (incl. other properties in the future).

My current state (I'll add more as time goes on if folks are posting):

* Just got pre-approved for a %5.25 loan from Quicken with 0 points... Is this a good rate, should I be poking around a lot more or invest the time in house-hunting? This will be my first property. Should I invest in points?

* I'm looking at properties on Zillow & Craigslist right now; are there any big things I should be looking for or are there any useful overviews on the process here?

* Are there any more extensive calculators/spreadsheets for managing income flow around all of this and comparing against the opportunity cost elsewhere (e.g. stocks)?

* How much should a property manager cost? Given I plan on doing a lot of traveling at the same time, I'll probably end up need a property manager running most things (incl. finding tenants).

I'm of course going to do more internet searching for a lot of this information and continue doing more research around here over the next couple weeks, but if there's any immediate 'gotchas' I should be watching for or things I should get rolling now because they take time (e.g. setting up appointments to see places, getting mortgages pre-approved). 

Sorry again for the broadness, thanks again for the wisdom!

Cheers,

Gabe