I know a lot of service members and many of them head back home or to a favorite duty station when they retire or move on from active duty. 

Today our properties are retirement income, we have little or no interest in scaling so leverage is moot.At your age there are lots of options.

I will say this is as far from healthcare, insurance and retirement planning as I could find!

They won t tell you about self directed retirement accounts like IRAs and Solo 401ks that allow investors to invest in assets that are non securities involving real estate or private loans.Hourly fee advisors can and do advise clients on RE and other alternative investments.There are other forums on BP that discuss self directed IRAs and Solo401ks and RE in detail.

Engineer by trade,  who thought I was close to retirement & realized I have to keep working (at least 6 more years) .

@Madison BalterThe main things I looked for were growing cities, best places to move to, landlord laws, retirement states.

> Airdna had one I believe they retired (not Market Minder ... forgot the name - plotted a bunch of triangles in a matrix)> Mashvisor currently offers a heatmap feature for "Airbnb COC return" - cumbersome, but you can manually scroll across the US and look for green areas while pulling your hair out every time their interface freezes> I'm actually beta testing a new platform a company called STR Insights is launching that displays the same data in table form with a map feature as a bonus to double click into individual markets and see where high performing listings are locatedAll 3 are essentially doing the same thing: comparing average STR revenues (scraped from Airbnb/VRBO) to average home prices (scraped from Zillow, etc.) and converting them into a ratio.

My goal isn't just to make money and retire, but to actively pursue great deals.

Finally I must say my wife and I would like to have a property in the area for our own, so we can have a place to use whenever we retire and wanted to spend time there with her family, or just enjoying the beauty of the south of France. 

My dad in particular needs a sale to happen so he can retire as he's been living with the disease M.S. for quite some time.