I already do everything you advise....minus the vacation thing cause I enjoy travelling but am super frugal other than that.Just following your next advice of waiting now.

I recently traveled to New Orleans, and would love to invest in Real Estate there. 

they live in Utah with mom so Every 3 weeks I travel to see them and family.  

We have a great handle of the city, and my day job allows me to travel to all of the smaller communities surrounding it.

You have to deal with several external entitiesa) Title search companyb) Lender ordered appraisalc) Home inspectord) Closing attorneyIn theory, everybody could do their job in 2 days but in practice it does not happen.

The internet killed most every travel agent, but the overall industry got bigger.   

I'm an investor out of Denver and I will be traveling to Tulsa tomorrow to look at properties.

Consider meeting the material participation tests without drive and travel time.

if i was living in the us i would for sure be more hands on, its something i did with my the property i currently own where i live (did a complete renovation using an external contractor) but that's not that case.  

I have about four savings account which totals a little over 3k for different reasons like Emergency (2k), Travel (1k), a credit union saving (~300+), and investments (~350 and adding [Had more but I spent it some stuff to educate myself and get started with the stock market.