Quote from @Diana Teng: Hi all,I think my question above is pretty direct.I'm interested to buy my first rental property, and after doing a brief search I see that there are quite a number of places out-of-state (I live in NY state)  that offer affordable homes that deem to be in hot market areas right now (according to many different articles online). 

Overall, Section 8 is a good way to get some pretty reliable income to get the property cash-flowing, provide additional experience, as well as with the required annual inspections, make sure your property stays in a good condition! 

We have zip codes that have lower and and higher end areas within the same zip so not a good marker to use.Going along with that a lot of the neighborhoods are very street by street or change pretty quickly by block, so you have to be aware of that.

I know the restrictions are pretty strict for STR’s but was wondering if it’s the same level of regulation for arbitrage.

we ran into this in FLA  a few years back when I had 4 starts and I exited that market.. permits  sub base all pretty tough for someone who is not there and already knows the systems hands down and has a devoted loyal sub base.. thats the key in my mind.

Most times you can be pretty safe estimating an hour for this, but if your property is in a rural area or a heavily congested urban area with slow-moving traffic, you may need to be realistic about it taking longer.BTW: you should be realistic about a Service Call fee even for little jobs.

If you are looking for a more laid back and roundtable type discussion of all things real estate, you are more than welcome to join us every Tuesday morning on Zoom or Thursday morning at Kairos Coffee where we discuss everything from assumable loans, to creative buying strategies, to landlord tenant laws and pretty much everything in between! 

My only concern to look out for is that things can go 'rural' pretty quickly if you start venturing outside of town, and most lenders are going to put the brakes on financing if the appraisal lists the property as 'rural' (has to do with what they perceive as the availability of future tenants).Watertown, NY - It probably is as good as you believe, but the lending licensing is pretty tricky up there, so its just  bit more difficult to find lenders that operate up there.

I didn't negotiate a ton on price as the deal seemed pretty reasonable.

I'm not an SME on immigration law, but I know that you can get burned pretty badly if you run afoul of OFAC and AML stuff.