Determine Your BudgetSet a Realistic Budget: Consider the cost of tuition, living expenses, and your financial situation.Mortgage vs.

A) it controls my cost.

We have numerous who have their payments set up to auto-pay.

Even if I were found guilty, the cost would be in the thousands, not in the millions.

While under contract, we perform due diligence and there will be some soft costs incurred. 

.- Expected renovation costs $1MM.

Here are additional comments:1) Buying out of state removes any local knowledge you have from assisting in your success, including knowing areas, people and costs. - We always recommend buying your first rental locally if possible and DIY managing to learn as much as possible before investing OOS.2) Lots of crooks and incompetents in the PMC world:( They both cost you money.- As already stated, you'll have a small portfolio.

Inherently the steps are the same as if you were purchasing with financing save potentially less closing costs and ability to close sooner (if needed).The terms of your offer (ie -contingencies, closing cost splits etc) will determine what is different. 

For cash-on-cash evaluation of rental properties, it is critical to identify ALL of  your acquisition costs. 

You might check with your Self-Directed IRA Trust Company/Custodian, they might have a brokerage connection capability where you can setup a brokerage account tied to your IRA, then you can with that brokerage to invest in various public market investments, in some cases stocks, mutual funds, ETF's, treasuries, and CD's.