Welcome, Sam!
I bought my first investment property in WA (where I live) and my second in NC (not where I live). There was so much learning associated with that first deal, and I'm thankful I lived nearby. The second property had very few unknowns after learning most things with the first property.
Before you identify your market, have you already identified your goals?
You mentioned cash flow in your comment. While there are returns and security in substantial positive cashflow, you also get returns through appreciation, tax deductions, and loan paydown. Depending on your goals, you may be able to deal with lower (or even negative) cashflow to access greater appreciation/tax deductions. With greater appreciation, you can leverage that increased value through a HELOC or cash-out-refinance to purchase or rehab your next investment property.
Where to begin?
There are investors buying in every market every day. Many investors will tell you that they started where they live since they know the area and can physically visit the property if something goes wrong.
- You can find your local real estate investing meetups. You can learn investing vocabulary there (if you're not familiar already), meet potential partners, and get recommendations from active investors for local brokers, contractors, lenders, etc. You'll also learn what strategies are working well for investors in your area to make investment properties work (e.g., DADU development, AADU development, basement ADU conversion, rent-by-the room house hacks, etc.--all very popular in my WA market).
- If you're not familiar with investing vocabulary, there are plenty of books. The one that made me confident to start was this one. Feel free to PM me if you want to hop on a Google Meet call to run through a calculator spreadsheet together.
How to find an out-of-state partner or agent?
- After investing in your local market (if possible, even if you need to partner to fund the deal), you can search "agent recommendation in [CITY]" in the Bigger Pockets forums to see which agent other investors love working with or use the Bigger Pockets Agent Search.
- You can ask your local investor agent to recommend a investor agent in the out-of-state market you're interested in too. They likely know plenty of teams across the country from their own investing and networking.
- Your out-of-state investor agent should have plenty of recommendations for local contractors, lenders (conventional and hard money), property managers, etc. and be able to identify appropriate assumptions for your analysis (e.g., appreciation, vacancy, rent estimates, etc.).
If you have questions, feel free to PM me--happy to help.
