Hello BP,I am in the process of using looking for a VA to assist with my business and one of the activities I will need from them is to make outbound calls for me.  For those of you who use or have used VA's for this ...

Everything is a gamble.

I work offshore in the oil and gas industry,  and I dont want to be offshore for my entire career, so I am looking to start investing in the hopes of working my way onshore and developing alternate income.From perusing on this site, buy and hold for a while, seems to be what Im gravitating towards, mostly because I am gone half the year currently, however, Im looking to learn a bit about everything and see where my interests/knowledge lie, as well as meet new people and maybe make some friends.As for fun interests, they are diverse and laughable at times.

Why gamble with your money?

Here is why:1) every month I'm paying down my debt using my cash flow and can pay extra towards my debt and still make more money vs waiting for future appreciation2) rents in my area have gone up for 80 years now3) my rental income is subsidized by HUD so your tenants over time will not pay consistently when they lose their Job, get disgruntled, have a bad day lol4) the rental income I get is 2x more per dollar invested therefore I more than compensate for higher appreciation but I have advantage of 1 to 3 aboveSummary my IRR is guaranteed you are gambling on both your tenant and local market.

Yes, I'm aware that 50k is not a huge investment by any means, but a ballpark figure to start with investing abroad.This initial investment will help me and my business partner establish a hands on 'feel' of offshore investment structure, taxation, financing and so on, alongside partnering with someone local.

s, it's a fairly upscale house and yes, in this national market, that is a considerable degree of "speculation" (read: gambling).Unless you know it's a hot up-scale area, I'd opt for something more mainstream which caters to a much larger potential market.

As well as if you buy anything via an FHA loan you need to live there for a year.So nothing all that special there with a HUD house.Generally though with the idea of buying a place, living in it while fixing it and then selling it for a profit you should keep a few things in mind.1) A year, or more, is a long time and the market can change so there is a gamble.  

As a last note, holding out for appreciation is akin to gambling, but I think you are right and was saying over a year ago that Augusta was undervalued.

If I ever run into private money I will do my best to make that work but private money seems very hard to find, but hard money on the other hand seems like a big gamble especially with my lack of experience investing.