Newbie looking to invest in first rental property. Help!

[Wei Yan]

Hi everyone,

Long time lurker here. I'm looking to invest in my first long term rental property. Specifically, I'm looking at townhouses that cash flow in the NoVA or MD Suburbs. This rules out many of the good areas.

The areas where I can find houses matching this criteria seems to be Gaithersburg, Germantown, Reston/Herndon, Centreville, and Lorton.

For NoVA, I don't want to go as far as Manassas or Woodbridge.

I grew up in North Potomac so I'm pretty familiar with MD. The Gaithersburg and Germantown neighborhoods are a little worse off than what I'd ideally want. I'm not familiar with the NoVA cities.

Can someone shed some light on rental properties in these cities or other cities that might work. Specifically, I'm most interested in Reston/Herndon.

Lastly, once I find a property where I'm comfortable with the numbers and neighborhood, how can I gauge how long it will take me to rent out this property. One of my biggest concerns in vacancy rate.

Thanks everyone in advance.