Ready to Invest, Grateful for advice!

[Honor Dunn]

Hi All,

First off, I have been reading Bigger Pockets for years and I would like to start this post expressing a tremendous amount of respect and admiration to all you folks. You are all so generous with information and I take inspiration from your bravery , intelligence and proactive mentality.

I am a first time investor,  (I did have a rental that was our first home that we turned into rental when we moved, but ultimately it was a disaster experience, more on that another time), looking to invest in 2 properties in a landlord friendly state. I live in California and and I am thinking either Ohio, Florida, Missouri or Kentucky. Every time I think I've landed on a strategy and area to buy I get distracted by another city or approach. I'm all over the place!

Latest Plan:

I was thinking about buying one property through Rent to Retire (I've already spoken to them) and using their turnkey services and buying 1 property through rootstock or even on my own and sourcing my own PM. My husband and I are both w-2s and do not qualify as real estate professionals. We have up to $100,000 to invest. in class B neighborhoods.  Does anyone have any words of wisdom or recommendations for locations, properties management companies, approaches on how too streamline the thought process  (I'm all over the place), tools/websites to use for neighborhood analysis etc.

Thank you for your time and advice!