@Richard Harrison, your desire to honor and reward loyalty and relationship is admirable.  

Being a live in land lord has it's cons but overall at our age I've found it to be the most rewarding and tangible investment. 

@Rachel LuotoGood question, I share your pain and fully understand the predicament at hand.Yes, I too faced the same situation as a New Yorker and decided to take the road less travelled and invest in Atlanta.However, Adam Bartomeo also has a point and you can extend your search beyond Washington to the States bordering it and move outwards if necessary.Frankly, this type of investing can be challenging, but, equally rewarding and it allows for scalability of your funds.I personally manage my out of State holdings, because of my skills and capabilities, but, you have to think of engaging property management if these attributes are lacking on your part.

You can even carve out the burden of the cost of solving the problem.Of course, there ought to be an additional incentive to you which rewards you for solving the problem(s).

Desk fees can range from $100 a month plusE&O insurance is about $100 per transactionCommissionsI put this last because you should really be focused on the above questions.The money will flow when you start putting deals together.The more deals and education you have the more money you will make, but there is a learning curve and the brokerage needs to be rewarded for that effort.There are Brokerages that offer a 50/50 split to new agent and there are offices with only a desk fee of $100 a month, so nearly 100% commissions.The difference is that the 50/50 split office will hold your hand and offer way more training and possibly some leads and the $100 a month office considers you an experience agent that only need minimal assistance and NO lead generation.I hope you find this information useful and if you need anything else please reach out to me offline.anaheim, brea, costa mesa, coto de caza, cypress, dana point, fountain valley, garden grove, huntington beach, irvine, la habra, ladera ranch, laguna beach, laguna hills, laguna niguel, lake forest, mission viejo, newport beach, orange county, placentia, rancho santa margarita, san clemente, san juan capistrano, santa ana, stanton, tustin, westminster, yorba linda

Real estate investing is hard work, but super rewarding!

There are additional complications dealing with owners directly, but I find the personal connections really rewarding. 

Driving around looking for ugly houses and handwriting letters is not fun, but you did the work and hopefully are going to reap the rewards. 5 calls off of only 30 houses mailed 5 times is pretty darn good by the way. 

Flipping at a distance has a really poor risk-reward ratio IMO, especially when you should be able to expand locally a lot easier and with a lot less risk.

Of course more work and time needed but the rewards should be there in most scenarios.