I was able to relate every potential house back to time I spent over those 10 days.One of the neighborhoods I thought I was going to love turned out to be a major dud..so happy I tried the area out.I had my realtor go see the houses and FaceTime me when performing the walk through.I picked a house and came back out to AZ during the inspection period to make sure I was good with the house.It's a big investment...my advice is spend $4-5K on travel, have fun while your looking at houses, and then make sure you are 100% happy with the home during your due diligence period.  

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Love that you’ve got a built-in contractor—it really makes these kinds of plays a lot smoother. 

The distressed houses will be 250k+, I don't know for sure but I did look at setting up a network in Salt Lake City a few years back and I remember the price to play being very high and it was a competitive/active market with a ton of cash transactions.The minor leagues to this REI thing is:1) Get yourself ready by opening an LLC. 

I have a few options in play right now for my goal of adding another property to my portfolio this year, it seems like the Chicago market is yelling at us to invest into single family homes in B+ areas.

I thought it would be fun to start this topic.

We have had a Pack-N-Play in our lake house from the get.

At this point in your life I'd advise putting all of your focus into finishing your degree, assuming you won't get drafted and can make millions playing ball.While you're doing that I'd advise building good personal finance habits.

There’s no one-size-fits-all path, and that’s what makes this game so interesting and fun!

That’s the kind of leverage you earn after 5,000+ doors.Most folks don’t have that kind of network or history, which is why I’ve been building a tool that helps level the playing field.