New Investor looking at Birmingham, AL

[Daniel Strauss]

Hi everyone,
My name is Daniel, I am 27 years old and live in San Diego, CA. I have a wonderful family and one of my biggest passions in life is helping others. I work a full time day job and am an aspiring real estate investor on the side. I have been doing research, taking courses, listening to podcasts, browsing forums, attending webinars etc about real estate investing for the past year but have yet to pull the trigger on my first rental property. I am interested in buy and hold with a focus on cash flow over appreciation. 

After much research, I have become very interested in Birmingham, AL and the surrounding areas. I have found a real estate agent I like in the area who is forwarding me listings but I am finding that my lack of specific neighborhood knowledge is preventing me from feeling secure in choosing a property to start with. I am hoping to invest in a B or C neighborhood. However, I am unsure how to accurately differentiate different neighborhood classes from afar and do not want to end up becoming very interested in a property only to fly out to BHam and find out it is in a D neighborhood that I thought was a C neighborhood. Any advise or resources from the experienced (or unexperienced) investors in the group would be greatly appreciated.

I look forward to networking with you all and would love to help anyone out with the specific knowledge and life skills I have as well. Thanks for reading.

-Daniel