Megan Hanks

In early 2015 I approached my husband with a business plan that involved buy and hold real estate to achieve financial freedom. We were living in Atlanta, GA at the time. We had just moved there from Dallas, TX, had sold our home, thus had a bit of capital to invest. Being new to the area was a challenge but I quickly came across Bigger Pockets and suddenly all this amazing knowledge was at my fingertips. I connected with a real estate agent who my husband met on a flight from NY to ATL and was able to do my first two deals by July of 2015. All seemed to be on track and then we moved again in the beginning of 2016. This time the move took us to Northern California's Bay Area, the single most expensive place to live in the US. For the plans I had put together, I just couldn't get the numbers to work, it's just a really expensive market. I was managing my two properties from a distance and fell out of the daily habit of researching the market and analyzing deals. A few months ago we thought about selling the properties in Atlanta and something just sparked my interest back to REI. I started listening to Bigger Pockets podcasts again and one of the first ones I came across was with David Greene about Long-Distance Real Estate Investing! I'm learning that it's not as hard or scary to invest outside of your state if you have the right network. So I'm back and it's early 2018 and I'm ready to do a couple of more deals to get my goals on track.