Stephanie Bell

My partner and I had wanted to get into real estate investing for quite a while, in part to diversify our investment portfolio overall and in part to add to our retirement fund. We're living in a very high cost of living city with very few viable real estate investment opportunities, very high property values, and total reliance on appreciation vs cash flow. We had done lots of research on investing in the Canadian context but just didn't see any good options in our city or anywhere near it. We didn't want to start off investing more than a few hours away from where we lived. We didn't even consider investing across the border for quite a while, but we started doing some research about what special challenges might exist for Canadians investing in the US, and it turned out it was less complicated than we had thought. There are several affordable US markets within a few hours of where we live, so we decided to jump in. Buffalo is the largest and closest city, with good prospects for investors, so we've started there.