Bad idea for my first REI to be out of state?

[Michael Junior]

I’ve been looking at deals in my area, Fairfield county Connecticut. Very expensive and competitive market( as is everywhere else im sure). I have Yet To purchase My First piece of property. Running the numbers in my area compared to lets say for example.. Burlington,NC. The margins for cash flow 1. Look greater in NC. and 2. Purchase price of these properties are less than half of what I’m looking at locally. So lower buy in.. higher cash flow.. Am i missing something or does it not make much more sense to dive in OOS of the rip? So basically im sayIng with no hard experience besides BP podcasts and plenty of other self education.. is it too risky to invest OOS ? Or if the numbers work just Nut up... thoughts??

[James Galla]

It's risky, but if you're willing to throw money at it, it may be worth it. Get a nice team and you might successfully avoid the war zones. Pictures on Zillow and Google maps won't really give you a feel as to how it is walking around the neighborhood. If you have a nice team, maybe your management company won't destroy your cash flow with a million needless expenses that you have no way to verify to see whether they are actually necessary.

Just a heads up from personal experience in living in the Akron "war zone," I would never invest out of state in Akron without local assistance. I imagine the same is true of many areas.