Good day from up north

Hello everyone,

I am very, very, new to investing. We have a commercial building that used to house a retail plumbing store that my husband and I had until we closed it in 2003.

It is currently rented (3 units) but one is due to go vacant in December.

My husband works 12 to 16 hours a day at our plumbing service business. With both of us being cancer survivors this is not a good senario for him and I am in great hopes that we will be able to put his expertise in plumbing and heating to a much more profitable and enjoyable use with investment properties.

Here’s one of my dilemas… we live in a small town in Alaska. The road ends just seven miles from our house ( really it ends. dead ends!) The only way out is to turn around and go back from whenst you came. We have a population of about 4500 people. There is a smaller town 20 miles up the road, then the next closest town is a hundered miles form here… maybe 15 to 20,000 people there and beyond that a few tiny settlements on your way to Anchorage ( our biggest city with about 600,000 people).

Mean price for a well built, nice but not oppulent home in Homer Proper is about $150 per square foot. give or take depneding on location. around $360,000 for a nice 2400 sqr foot house on a couple of acres. The outlying areas drop drastically.

I think the availabilty will be slim here and I will need to expand to areas up the road. I am a bit hesitant to be making offers on houses I cannot personally inspect. Driving up the road once a week is probably not doable especially in the winter. Can anyone give me feed back on making offers and locating deals long distance and on sight unseen properties.

Thanks in advance to all of you and thanks for the great site.

Tanya