Christian Osgood says small out-of-state residential properties usually lose money. He argues you should only buy properties big enough to justify visiting in person, since walking the site catches damage that paperwork misses. A contractor once fell through a damaged floor that an inspection would have found.
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Investors always lose money when they do this. I hear this happen quite frequently, and this is why you need to buy bigger properties, by the way. They buy single-family houses or small multifamily out of state. Now, there's nothing wrong with buying out of state. In fact, lots of people do it. I own in Washington State and Texas. Used to live in Washington, now live in Texas. I still buy in both. However, I buy big enough deals where it's worth actually flying out to the property. People buy these deals where they spend all of their cash flow just to make one trip out to see the property. What do they do? They never see it. I just had a friend had a contractor fall through the second floor into the first floor. Now, had they walked the property, you may notice something like the floors don't work. However, they bought it based on the advertising and the paper, and they looked through the books. They did their due diligence. It's not due diligence if you don't go to the darn property and see it with your own eyes. Now they're going to lose money. Their investors are going to lose money. Buy deals that are big enough where it's worth driving out to the property.