I have put together a group of partners that want to begin our, hopefully long term, venture in to the real estate world. We have high hopes of eventually getting into buy and hold on bigger properties. But to start, ...

For example I have trouble investing in plain vanilla US mutual funds that don't report to the UK HMRC.

People like you give me even more confidence and drive to invest at a young age!

@Roman Rida Welcome Roman, I would say networking with people here that possibly do investments out of state is a good starting point, then meetups in person in areas near you, and ultimately once you find the place you really want to invest in, flying out driving those neighborhoods and scheduling a meetup in your plans for investor meetings in that area. 

@Youseif AliThe Allegheny County Real Estate Office in downtown Pittsburgh has a CD/Flash drive you can purchase that contains an excel spreadsheet with all matter of useful information, but it definitely includes USE CODE and neighborhood/municipality. 

Especially if you are going in to base at the south gates, Georgetown is only a 40-45 min drive, and about the same into downtown Austin, or 30 minutes to the Domain.

Great practice though and it led me to driving for dollars.

The drive towards newer homes for investors has been that there is a lot of building going on and pricing is still very competitive with new homes making the difference between old and new pretty slim. 

Think about a temporary use to help you make the payments (like a driving range, or a dump, or temporary storage). 

Once we had a chance to drive around and look at a bunch of properties I totally changed my strategy.