First Rental in a small town to reduce risk. Good or Bad?

[Joshua Zajac]

So after a 2 year drought from BP I finally got my act together and really started to get my mind and personal financial affairs in order. I will be debt free at the end of January. I have already 2 months of an emergency fund built but but was looking to build it up to 4 to 6 months. I must have listen to Podcast 200 at least 3 or 4 times and thought it was best. That provide me with such a simple but realistic path on starting out. So I'm ready to start looking at my first investment property. I have used the BP calculators to analyze deals and took Brandon Turners advise of analyzing a deal once a day to gain experience and to be comfortable with it. So my thought moving forward is I was looking to acquire this first property in a small town in Northwestern Illinois that is about an hour and half drive from me (I live in the Western Suburbs of Chicago). My business partner moved out there 2 months ago and I kept asking him information about the area, the good and bad parts, the economy, schools, jobs, rental rates, etc. I plan to fund my first deal using a HELOC (My current house and completely paid off) and am looking for either a SFR or a duplex. I have construction experience and for my first deal would plan to do majority of renovations. The reason why I wanted to start out far away from my current home is due to housing prices are inexpensive (30K - 60K), it feels like it would like less risk (money wise) and from what I gather not as many investors are out in this area. Plus I really want to prove to my self that I can due this and make it work. I did set a goal for myself to purchased my first rental property before the end of 2017. So I guess what I'm asking is, does this seem like a terrible idea to start out? Should I was tweak this in some way? Or should I rethink this plan entirely. I know I'm probably leaving out some key information, sorry for that. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.