In my area of Northern CA we get a lot of people that are coming out of country for a local church ministry and stay anywhere from 1 year plus.

Also there's a community college, and a private college within walking distance (graduations, sporting events, and another ministry school that draws people to conferences from around the world)The past few years we've leased the house out for $3400 per month plus they do all maintenance (we live in southern California and house is in Redding, CA)I was thinking for a group vacation rental our property might work.

The Dominican Republic can be a great place to invest but, personally, I'd avoid Punta Cana.Two years ago, during a meeting I had at the Ministry of Tourism in Santo Domingo, one of the head honchos there clearly told me "If I were you, I wouldn't invest in Punta Cana".

@Seth Matherne I am a similarly-minded, potential investor in Baton Rouge and have a heart for ministry in the area.

If it's on a well you can usually have it tested by your local ministry of health.

I own a 4600 sq. ft. house on 20 acres, close to 2 colleges, and a church that has a ministry school with a global network.

There are two main ones they're called "health cost sharing ministries".

I just got back to America from an educational/ministry consulting trip to Paraguay (you can Google "Zap Martin Paraguay" for details) with a couple professors from PLNU (Denise Necoechea, PhD and Kristie Szentesi, MA).

When I moved to southern California from northern California, I rented my house out to 14 college age girls from a ministry school.

I have a desire to support uplifting/encouraging art in Houston, for the art (music, performing arts, visual arts) is the heartbeat of the culture of a city, help propel the local church I am a part of to new levels of influence and ability to help (they have a large prison and drug addict ministry), and to provide future employment/contract work that can help establish good character and personal development in said employees.Real Estate/Business has the potential to impact on a city level what would be nearly impossible to do in the position of a W2 salary, even at higher levels in the corporate ladder IMO.This impact potential gets me absolutely jazzed.And so since November I have devoured books, burned through podcasts, employed my excel and access skillz, joined a local REI club, met up with local investors, read numerous BP threads/blogs, and now begun the actual deployment of action steps.The beginning of March has marked the real start of a new endeavor along side my engineering day job... heading down the Wholesaling route, seeing as deals are the must-have corner stone for this entire business.