Vacation rental properties are very management intensive, have much higher maintenance and cleaning costs, advertising and marketing, ongoing guest interaction and issue resolution, and property management fees are much higher if you are not doing it yourself (doing it yourself would be more difficult if done from Tacoma).  

Will buy in any area but the numbers really have to be extraordinary to make up for the worse areas.

Thanks again for making this forum available, and looking forward to the exciting journey ahead learning from and interacting with you all. 

However, this site thrives on interactions and as such we encourage two way exchanges and look forward to educational and thought provoking ideas relevant to REI.

Any interactions with nearby Ft.

It all depends on your comfort level having roommates that you will interact with daily.

I'm excited to announce that we've replaced our old BiggerPockets Bulletins system, which had grown outdated, with a new, easy to navigate page that is designed to bring you the top real estate news and content each day.Introducing: BiggerPockets HeadlinesBookmark the direct link at:http://www.biggerpockets.com/newsSimply stop by and peruse the day's headlines from the top sources and blogs on the web.The page can be found in the LEARN dropdown as News & HeadlinesWe will be making updates to the Headlines page over the next weeks to allow for additional social interaction and to add other improvements.

If you stick around and interact with the community you will likely make some excellent and very helpful contacts.

Furthermore, there is an expectation that home values appreciate over time which can be nice but most people I interact with buy their home with goggles designed to meet their needs and not meet their investment beliefs/objectives.One of the best things I did was convert my primary residence to a rental and downsize substantially.

Charles area.I hope to interact with more people on this site.