CA newbie looking for Out of State

[William Hoppes]

Hi, my name is William Hoppes and I'm looking to try small multifamily REI. I'm looking for passive income/higher returns; I like my Vanguard funds but I'm willing to take on some risk/work to get those returns from 10%->20%. I live in Sacramento CA and I've accepted that investing locally isn't really feasible so I'm looking out of state. I won't say it's impossible to do multifamily/passive-income in CA, I just doubt "I" can.

I've got no real estate experience, lifetime renter, so I've got a lot of learning to do and I'm looking for a market with enough cash flow/cheap enough that I can afford to make some mistakes. So far I've been looking at large-ish cities with the best price-to-rent ratios from Zillow research and then looking up forum posts to see what people are saying. So far the big three I'm looking at are Cleveland, Kansas City, and Albany NY. 

I would appreciate any advice, especially from people doing out of state investing. Thanks in advance!