Should I start in a different location first?

[Seth B.]

Hello All!

I had a question for everyone here and wanted to get some opinions on the topic. I currently live in Madison, WI (Verona to be exact) and I want to get into the buy and hold aspect of REI.

Ideally, I would like to live in one unit and rent out the other; however, it has been quite a challenge to find any kind of property that isn't super expensive, and will return some good rents...

End of the day, I love Madison and would like to stay here. I just can't find anything! Maybe I'm not looking in the right places? I've tried Craigs List, realtor.com, and Zillow.. I'm sure I'm missing something.

Anyways, if I were to go an hour south of me to Rockford, IL. I'm finding a ton a duplex properties, and more specifically I'm finding them at really low prices :) Now I understand that the location could be terrible, and I'd obviously do my due diligence to make sure the location and tenants are solid before I made a move...

My question is... would it behoove me to start off in Rockford as I'm only 26 and want to start off with cheaper property with greater returns? That way I could get one property live on the one side and fix it up and then grab a new property every year... live in it then move.

Once I get up to 5 properties I could hand it off to a property management company. Then maybe move back to Madison and deal with more expensive properties.

Overall, I'm sick of working in a corporate environment and I want to start REI ASAP! I'm super handy and I would love to just work on fixing up properties and living in them and making money all at the same time.

What do you all think? Thanks for any advice!!