How do you buy property out of state?

[Gilbert B.]

Hello Biggerpockets.

Recently, I been looking at houses that are cheap and I found many of them to be in the pheonix area. I used zillow.

Im pretty sure I seen some homes for around 60k, heck even one for 25k.

My question is, Im in california. How do I buy a home in pheonix? Can I do it through a computer?

[Jon Holdman]

Buying is easy. Find an agent, make an offer, sign all the paperwork, send in your money and you own it. Depending on how tech savvy your agent is, you might be able to do it all by computer. If not, there are fax machines and Fedex.

A better question is, should you? Would you seriously buy a house based just on a few pictures and the word of strangers? That's an easy way to get separated from your money. You should, IMHO, go there and have a look around at the very least. Meet some people, learn the area.

An even better question is what will you do once you buy it? Hire a PM and rent it out? Fix and flip? Flip as-is?