Nowadays (post-housing-crisis), one really has to have a large chunk of money for a down payment to buy a house. 

If you provide them with a scale drawing of your warehouse they will design a kit to fit and can either send you the building (for which you can get bids for erection of it) or they can provide you with a building and labor quote. 

Unfortuna-tely, people nowadays do much on-line and not in person. 

Nowadays we have so many resources available so we can dip our toes in the water first before completely diving into an industry. 

Nowadays I have a roster of probably 30 vendors that I can reach out to (and sometimes I blast through all my options for a particular problem).The biggest challenge is find good handymen for doing low hanging fruit (fix outlets, fix sink, change light fixture, spackle/paint).

Utility companies may be less forthcoming nowadays maybe for privacy reasons. 

@Sasha Josephs i have been long distance landlording for quite a while now. rehabbing outside of my local area was a breeze to be honest. i have a team i can trust and i just made phone calls and checked on progress when necessary. if i was in the area, i would be there swinging a hammer until 3am everyday. for me, i am better off far away. i have not done any local rehabs. i flew back to the area once, maybe twice, to check on things. i did not fly back to just check on things though. the trip was always for other reasons and i just popped by because i was in the area. if you do not trust your contractor while you are away, that is your first problem. nowadays, we can send pictures and videos very easily. that is all that i need. 

I hardly recommend people because most nowadays are not worth recommending though Fund & Grow is who I refer for people who need seed money for their business or for any reasons you might need lines of credit.Thanks Fund & Grow for all the help, it was worth it!

The rest of my properties are in the Midwest but I do have partners in cities (outside of Cincy) where I have my properties.Having said that, I understand Boston is quite expensive.Option #1: is to invest in areas, say 1 hour away from Boston and hopefully not as expensive as Boston. 1 hour is close enough that you can still monitor your investment but not too far that you waste so much time on travel.And yes, with the technology nowadays you can monitor your properties from a distance.

On the investment side, it's tough to find anything that meets buying criteria nowadays anyway so if a bunch of people start bidding on something, I'm usually out pretty quick and not getting frisky with an escalation clause.