If you have enough of the right kind of capital [long term oriented and willing to ride out the ups and downs of a bad quarter or year] then you can't help but make money since home prices generally go up and to the right.The first iteration of innovation is often clunky and worse than the status quo.

And it's great that you're so open-minded to remotely owning out-of-state real estate.The Northeast has a lot of high-paying jobs - the best thing you can do is save your income, then take that capital and re-deploy it to Southern STR real estate.I'd strongly suggest NOT getting a property manager (waste of money) & always looking for ways to innovate & improve - there's a lotta money to be made in this game!

I am an Army Reservist just returning from Iraq in Nov 2019.

Signed contract in Nov 2018 for two houses on the same parcel.

I have worked on some houses over the years that I am shocked that they have stood around this long, seeing some of the framing and the failures before they knew certain things we now know with modern building science and product/technique innovation.

@Bruce Ray I closed on my first property in nov.

Hello, BPMy wife and I decided to place our then primary residence for rent in Nov/Dec '19.

I've had a few tenants whose leases ended in Nov or Dec which was a bad time to try to get new tenants.

THAT'S how you gain and maintain marketshare, sticking to examples we all know about, we can point to biggerpockets, we can point to the growth of zillow/redfin/etc (hate em all you want, you can't argue with success), the growth of the iPhone from when it was launched, and so on.For existing giants trying to maintain marketshare, you just gotta stay relevant, you gotta stay important, you gotta keep innovating.

https://www.highgroundnews.com/features/ExchangeBuilding.aspx this is what kickstarted some of the innovation but its no longer a start-up village