New investor from Cherry Hill, NJ

[Parth Shah]

Hey all,  

      I wanted to introduce myself to the BP community.  I have learned a ton from just browsing the site for the past few months and this website is an incredibly powerful tool.

A bit about myself:  My name is Parth and I am a healthcare professional in South Jersey.  I have no real experience in real estate, however my father has some properties in North Jersey.  The future cash-flow, tax-benefits, and the ability to have a tangible asset hedged against inflation is what attracts me to real estate.  My goal is to have my first purchase by the end of the year.  

What I'm looking for:  I have saved some money and am looking to invest in single-family or multi-family investments in the Philadelphia area in A/B neighborhoods.  I am not interested in run-down/crime-ridden neighborhoods where I will have more headaches than returns. As a professional, I would like to invest in areas where the headaches will be minimal and the returns as high as possible.  I would like to invest in properties between $100-175k to begin with, I can put up to 40% down.  I don't want to be over-leveraged either.  Please advise me on some areas as well as some people I can connect with.   Ideally, a cap rate of at least 8% would be great, however, cash flow isn't as important as principal pay-down and minimal headaches with managing the property.  

I have also looked into Turnkey properties, howeer, I would rather stay local to Philly for now.  Thank you, and keep up the great work!