Investing from afar?

[Mackenzie L.]

Hi all!

As a newbie, I'm pretty eager to jump in and start my real estate adventure! However, I'm hesitant because not only am I moving to a different state in 9 months, but my future husband and I will end up moving again in a few years & could end up living outside of the country (military life!). Anyone else have a similar story? Any tips or advice on how to move forward?

Thanks!! :)

[Kerry Baird]

There are a number of us who have walked a similar path.  First, start with where you are: Clean up or improve your credit, work on saving.  You'll always need funds for down payments, or for reserves (often 3 to 6 months of payments for your mortgages, set aside), or for rehab funds.  We bought our first home as a young military to military couple, in England.  We also bought our last house in England, and three houses back in the US, while over in the UK.  

I recommend you read Mike Summey's Weekend Millionaire's Secrets to Investing in Real Estate, for learning how to buy based upon NOI, and grow wealth with buy and hold. Also, Keller's Millionaire Real Estate Investor...and FLIP. You want to see what inspires you. We have lived in fixers and improved them over time, we have flipped, we have fixed-rented and then sold to our tenants, and we have done buy-and-holds. Now, nearing the end of the career, we are using the "debt snowball" to pay down and then pay off the properties we still hold.

Be sure to set up alerts, look for real estate investing meetups, clubs or REIAs.  And dig into the podcasts, if you haven't already.  There are nuggets of gold in those podcasts.  All the best~