I'm same distance away from Grass Valley, Yuba City, Oroville and Chico. 

I'm operating from a distance and in person meetings with prospective tenants won't be possible.I'm not sure that "age of social media profile" would indirectly fall under a protected class (such as age)?

He's still able to commute to his job in DC (the drive is actually a bit shorter now!)

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.

Call the city development person and see if you can find out what is driving the growth and if they expect it to continue.Maybe it is a great bedroom city and lots of people commuting to Birmingham?

Obviously, we would hopefully hire a trusted cleaner, but any other advice on managing a property from a distance?

Not to say that you can't jump to long distance investing right away but if you don't have any experience I would try to at least invest in one property within a 1-2 hour drive from where you live.

I would suggest doing your first flip close to home as there is a lot to manage, especially time and that is compounded severely when you do it from a distance.

The link is mentioned but I allways listen to it commuting so haven't been able to take note :PThank you,Francisco

But we basically followed David Greene's advice for finding a realtor in Long-Distance Real Estate Investing.Here's a summary of what we were looking for:* An agent who has experience being a landlord/investor and so already shares our perspective (looks for opportunity rather than curb appeal)* An agent who knows the Alexandria area well* An agent who doesn't mind showing us many houses and writing a bunch of lower offers* An agent who doesn't mind sharing their opinion about a property being wrong for us so we can move on to the next oneThere are many great meetups here.