It's impossible to answer your question without knowing how much you have to spend to acquire the house.

If not they could spend money and time and offend buyers if they update the property incorrectly.There are other options, such as landlording.

Had to spend additional money to get everything fixed.  

We are going to spend about 20K to bring it up to par but defiantly worth it.

Martin the property management argument isn't really an argument if you look at the bigger picture that most investors don't want to manage their properties anyways because they are spending most of the time on their main job.

Your total spend might be like $1,500/year on everything from brokerage to MLS to boards.

Here are the numbers:$30k - avg monthly income3 options for rent vs buying$12.5k - avg monthly payment (20% down) on $2mil home$6.25k - avg monthly rent on $2mil home$6.25k - avg monthly payment (71.5% down) on $2mil home3 options for return on capital:7% - avg yearly return on 71.5% down payment (assuming 5% avg yearly appreciation in SD)10% - avg yearly return on from S&P 500>10% - avg yearly return on investment property (just an assumption, but I think you are all here because you beat the stock market)First, the $12.5k monthly is very intimidating and beyond what I should be spending on shelter (a no-go for me)

This greatly helps me to be location independent and spend good amount of time in India.

It's a big decision, and I recommend spending some solid time in each area.

@Ben LeybovichI think in the perfect world, new investors would spend enough time and energy learning how to analyze properties themselves, what the various calculations mean, etc.