Used Zillow Rental Manager.

If you're planning to invest out-of-state, I recommend reading “Long-Distance Real Estate Investing: How to Buy, Rehab, and Manage Out-of-State Rental Properties” - I found it to be very helpful when I got started investing 2.5 years ago.

Ultimately, the decision should align with your investment goals, risk tolerance, and the amount of time you can dedicate to managing your properties.

typically if you are out of state investor, I recommend you have a local PM to rehab and manage the rental.

Hi Christina,I am the CFO for a Pinellas Property Management in TB FL and I use the following methods when verifying income for military personnel. 

After over a decade in asset management where I currently oversee a portfolio of more than 45,000 apartment units nationwide for a large Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac lender, I am finally ready to get into my first small multifamily buy and hold investment.

Since then, I have been a full-time RE investor, flipper, and partner in a property management company for almost 4 years now.This course is helpful and so are many others.

Hi Margarita-Great question.There are many mental blocks and friction points to buying your first property.First off, just buying property outside of a first or second home to use is not done by most people and buying your first home is a major purchase for most people.That means the people in our immediate sphere of influence are not thinking about buying investment property, they see it as risky and out of a sense of protecting you or themselves encourage you not to do it.I remember having the same mental blocks and fears you probably do thinking about buying your first property or first investment property.The most critical thing to overcoming these mental blocks is self education and surrounding yourself with the best team of people to help you.An investor friendly Realtor who can refer you to an investor friendly lender, title company or closing office, property inspector, property manager, and insurance agent.Real estate is relational and having the best team will keep you out of the weeds.To Your Success!

I would suggest that you rent the property and consider using a property manager who can finance the improvements for you up front and be repaid out of the rent so you can have passive rental income over the long run. 

I've also used GC's to complete full rehab jobs & depending on how much work a house needs and how comfortable I am with the rehab, often times I will sub out the work to different painters, handymen, electricians, plumbers, etc instead of using a GC.The more I do this the more comfortable I am managing the jobs myself and it often times saves me significant amounts of money on the rehab costs to just sub out the work vs using a GC for the full rehab.