Owner Occupied blues in pricey northern New Jersey

[Jessica W.]

My partner and I are 25yo, have up to 80k saved up for a down payment and make a combined $150k/year (conservatively, not counting my 2nd job); no kids. Currently we live with parents.

We're looking to buy our first property and we figured a multi-family would be a good investment. However, the only "deals" in the NJ area seem to be in Newark, Irvington, Paterson or other areas we'd rather not live.

Towns with great schools and a great neighborhood are have very few multi-families available and the few we've looked at are negative cashflow due to high purchase price and property taxes.

We've talked to our realtor about REOs and short sales but so far he hasn't found us anything.

We've explored cheaper towns bordering high crime areas and although we can find houses in the $200-300k range, taxes and lower rent prices make these properties barely positive. They're still in mildly sketchy areas to boot.

The best we've done so far is about $100 positive cashflow per month (if we were not living there) in a neighborhood we really like. However the house is at our max budget at $399k.

What should we do? We love Jersey, but living here can be such a money pit.