We have used personal properties to great success to help get our "Empire" started.

You might find that if you go inland, maybe even as far as the inland empire, you can find something local enough that you could drive to it in an afternoon if you really wanted/needed to or stop by on the way on a trip to Palm Springs in the winter or whatever..

The time it will take you to get in to real estate and get started branding and building yourself as the go to agent for anything of interest to you, you could have hired an agent to do all the work for you and you can put your time in to building your real estate empire.

Congrats on building up a sweet little empire!

Unless you live inland a good ways and can find a multi there.I've always bought out of state personally and enjoyed it.

I'm a long time blog reader and I'm just getting started with my own real estate "soon-to-be empire."

I work in the Inland Empire which is west of Los Angeles and includes cities such as San Bernardino, Redlands, Yucaipa, Riverside, etc.

I've got to hand it to him, he's built an empire and he's far more charismatic than I.

So needless to say I would like to get into Buy-and-Hold REI and build a self-sustaining empire to give me the time freedom that I need.

I could possibly buy a condo all cash here so that may minimize vacancy expenses.Purchase a MFR somewhere in the Inland Empire (looking at Corona or Riverside) or maybe even SFR or two to rent out.