I educated myself for years on multi-family investing (or so I thought), and still felt like a stranger to these type of investments.

For some stupid reason that makes literally 0 sense what so ever, people have more rights living in a strangers home for free without a lease than with one. 

Couple that with a market that you do not know, local vendors that will upcharge substantially because you're dumb money from out of state, and let's just call it what it is - you are blindly trusting strangers - agents, turnkey providers, contractors - that will make money if you buy a house in their market.

That's an ENOURMOUS amount of trust/money to put into a stranger's hands.

If you don't want to live with strangers you could also do what my wife and I are doing where we buy a new home every year with 3.5%-5% down and then rent the previous home out to a long term tenant. 

@Patrick Crehan you should be contacting your state's real estate licensing department and asking about this, or find a competent real estate broker or attorney to help you out.You won't survive your mistakes if you are asking for advice from strangers on this site.

Absolutely no strangers. 

That's an ENOURMOUS amount of trust/money to put into a stranger's hands. 

. :)  THANK YOU, sweet stranger!

Hi Everyone, I'm not a stranger to real estate in general, but this is my first full year as an investor .