You'll lose your money to turn over, repairs, and increase your risk of getting taking advantage of.

Getting into investing while serving overseas can be done but you will expect to pay a little extra money in repair or renting it out just because your not local. 

You want to make sure that your investor is buying the property and rehabbing it for 70% of it's after repaired value or LESS. 

The lease agreement didn't really specifically mentioned anything about winterizing, but it did say that we are responsible of any repair/maintenance in the house at the time of renting it.

I know a homeowner in an HOA where the HOA keeps forcing him to repair a little retaining wall that keeps getting hit by cars/trucks backing up into it due to being in a cul-de-sac.

@Dave Passey you're saying repairs and capex should be 10% each?

Hey Tyler,I did foundation repair for a number of years.

I also did put something in lease that if there’s a repair needed, we would pay the amount or the water and sewer bill during that time above the average bills for that tenant as we felt that was fair.

Josh Rogers How did you come up with $80k in repair costs?

We’ll make some other assumptions in order to keep this as close to an apples-to-apples comparison, too: You don’t have to invest a dime of your own moneyYou paid the same amount the REITs didVacancy Rate stays static at 15%You hire a property manager at 11%Repairs and maintenance are a very reasonable 7%Capex is about 8% since the homes are reasonably newYour mortgage rate on a 30-year fixed is 4.138% (more on why I picked that number in a bit)No PMI (no particular reason--I just like you)The numbers should look roughly like this:As you can see, you’re going to have to come up with a bit of cash each year, if you want to own them outright in 30 years.