New Buy-and-Hold Investor from DC, Looking to Invest in Las Vegas

[Alexa Hopkins]

Hi BiggerPockets! My name is Xa (it's really Alexa, but my friends call me Xa), and I live in Washington, DC. I am a government consultant and am looking to invest in my first investment property in the coming months! I am looking to buy-and-hold a rental property.

I am looking to invest in Las Vegas, specifically in the Summerlin or South Summerlin area. Before moving to DC, I lived at Charleston and Rampart while teaching math at Sunrise Mountain High School, so I know the city and still have a small network there. My partner lived in Las Vegas even longer than I did (we met soon after I moved there), attended Boyd Law School at UNLV, and retains many of his law school connections as well. While we have some contacts out there, I would still love to hear advice from others who bought, own, and rent out properties outside of their local regions.

Additionally, I love data and numbers and would love to get some insights about free real estate resources from other data consumers. Does anyone have suggestions regarding free data sets showing market trends over time that can be sorted by zip codes/neighborhoods? I am brand new to real estate but am eager to dive into the numbers.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post, and I can't wait to get to know the BiggerPockets community!