If you’ve always wanted to become a real estate investor but hesitated because you didn’t want to be stuck fixing toilets at 2 AM, let me introduce you to my friend, Tim.

Tim, a 35-year-old real estate investor, owns 15 rental properties in the Atlanta metropolitan area. He focuses on single-family homes that usually require about $10,000-$25,000 in cosmetic repairs before they’re ready to rent.

Since starting to buy property in Atlanta in 2012, his U.S. real estate portfolio has grown to $960,000inequity,with$14,000 in total monthly rent and about $6,000 in net positive cash flow each month after mortgage payments, expenses, and taxes.

So, why is this particularly noteworthy?

So far, this sounds like a typical real estate investment success story.

But this isn’t your typical narrative; the up-and-coming investor doesn’t self-learn how to refurbish a bathroom, nor does he learn how to screen tenants after the first one sets up a meth lab in the basement.

Tim has never picked up a hammer to fix one of his foreclosed properties.

He has never responded to an angry tenant’s 2 AM call.

He has never advertised for his properties, let alone met any of his tenants in person.

In fact, Tim lives on the other side of the world in Hong Kong. Atlanta is an 18-hour flight from home, and Tim’s demanding finance job keeps him at work from 6:45 AM until 7 PM or later, sometimes much later.

If a pipe bursts at 2 AM in Atlanta and the tenant needs it fixed, Tim might as well be on Mars.

What’s the key to investing in real estate from another continent?

At this point, you might be wondering:

How does Tim successfully manage 15 rental properties on the other side of the world when many investors struggle with just one property in their hometown?

How has he succeeded where many fail?

1. Maintain a Healthy Cash Flow Buffer

Buying real estate isn’t much like purchasing paper investment assets like stocks or bonds; it’s more akin to buying a business.

Do you have the bandwidth to hire others to do the job?

Many novice investors don’t fully account for vacancy rates, maintenance, rising interest rates, and recruitment costs in their deals. Then they get frustrated by the constant demands on their time and “unexpected” costs.

Even though Tim is an overseas investor, because he only makes deals that have healthy cash flow (even considering management and maintenance costs), he doesn’t have to be the one managing day-to-day operations.

“I believe I could get better deals and higher profits by being on the ground,” Tim explains. “With property management and leasing agents involved, I just need to leave more room at purchase to ensure enough cash flow.”

It’s Not About Being Remote

You don’t need to manage a rental portfolio on the other side of the planet to benefit from this lesson.

2. Build an Experienced, Trustworthy Professional Team

While rental income is passive, there’s always a small active component. The key to minimizing active income is having an excellent on-the-ground team.

3. Choose Areas that Align with Your Investment Goals

If you could invest anywhere in the world, how do you choose the right country, let alone city?

For Tim, choosing to invest in U.S. real estate was about finding a risk-reward ratio that aligned with his investment goals.

Final Thoughts

Of course, Tim couldn’t have built a million-dollar portfolio if he hadn’t been a diligent saver to start with.

But even if your investment journey is more at the stage of more time than money, there are many valuable lessons to be drawn from Tim’s story.

Many real estate investing articles focus on the endless pitfalls of managing agents, contractors, and tenants. You’ll read countless horror stories about nightmare tenants and how time-consuming and expensive it is to manage rental properties.

There’s a reason for that, because poor management and bad tenants can easily derail your real estate investment journey. Lack of experience can lead to significant mistakes, turning what looks good on paper into a financial nightmare.

There’s a learning curve to real estate investing, and it takes a lot of sweat to get it right – that’s an unavoidable truth. But as Tim shows, you can succeed where conventional wisdom says you can’t.