You've mentioned you're good at saving up quickly, which is definitely in your favor.

The transaction time is so compressed that it strongly favors those who can quickly and accurately analyze a property and the work needed, as well as having a team in place.

It's a chance to build equity in a property while potentially enjoying lower monthly payments.Additionally, owning a home with a VA loan is a great opportunity to get into the housing market with favorable terms.

For me, none of these variables looked favorably for the smokie investors buying at $500/sq ft. 

Bookkeepers who serve REIs have to have a good amount of U.S. tax code knowledge or at least have to know where to find the info.You're not going to get this for $4/hr.I think outsourcing other activities to other countries to take advantage of exchange rates can be effective but do yourself a favor and don't do this with your bookkeeping/accounting/tax advisory/tax filing/etc (anything financial).Just like Kristen Ambrose, we see really screwed-up bookkeeping records from these types of situations all the time.

At least do yourself a favor and look into those areas before settling for the burbs! 

Most if not all have lengthy agreements with clauses after clauses that are designed not to favor you if you want more autonomy in your property. 

They refused to repurchase two from me, which had me worried, but I ended up selling each of them for 30-40K more than I was going to sell to them for, so they did me a favor... poor decision making all around. 

And none of them in the landlord’s favor.

If you buy in areas you can comfortably afford that is growing, favorable laws( I know Carlos P is going to disagree with me here due to Cali), and ideally under the median price you'll make out like a bandit.