New to real estate investing, looking to learn

[Jon D.]

Hello BP forums!

First post here and I am completely new to real estate investing.

I live in Connecticut and I have settled on wanting my first investment to be in Connecticut. This is currently the only thing I am actually decisive about.

I think I'm struggling with analysis paralysis combined with generally being overwhelmed by all of the different metrics and data to look at.

Specifically, I'm currently trying to narrow my market within Connecticut, but I am getting stuck on how to determine a "good" market. My goals are cash flow primarily. I keep hearing that it makes sense to focus on markets that have strong economic and population growth, but there's really no overlap between population growth, economic growth, low prices, and low taxes.

So my question really is, what's the best way to get out of this? Is Connecticut just a bad market? Am I being too much of a perfectionist? How does one go about determining what a "good" market is to start out?

Thanks for any help on this.