How does an investor study a market if investing out of state?

[Akwasi Degraft]

Hey BP,

So how exactly does a new investor go about studying an out of state market in order to look for prospective areas for buy and hold, cash flow investing? I'm from NY but I'm interested investing maybe in the Mid West (seems like a good area for cash flow according to some people on BP). 

How did some of you out of state investors get started?