New Investor from Chicago area

[Nathan Fernandez]

My name is Nathan Fernandez and I am looking to generate passive income and grow my net worth using real estate. My wife and I live in the west suburbs (Westchester) and I currently work in downtown Chicago in the sourcing / contract negotiations / operations function. I've new to real estate in general, but have been reading the BiggerPockets books and listening to the podcasts for about a year.

My wife and I are both ready to jump into real estate and we have been saving aggressively for a down payment. We are looking to invest out of state due to the high cost of real estate in our area. I have been looking for deals that cash flow, and have not had much luck! 

We are looking to get more involved in the local RE community and will be searching for some local meetups to network and maybe find a potential partner (if there is value for both parties). I am interested to see how/where people in my area are finding deals.

Our ideal situation would be to BRRRR using cash/hard money to purchase and refinance after we rehab and get it rented out. However, to get over the hurdle of saving enough money for the purchase and renovation we are looking to put 20% down on a SFR or duplex in an appreciating area that will cash flow ~$100-$200 a month after all expenses. This will get us started and allow us to understand real estate by doing opposed to just reading a lot of books. Once we have a solid understanding of real estate we would then want to scale into multi-family rentals.

After the first rental we will feel more comfortable looking for hard money to finance the purchases but don't want to have the interest rate and short term loan while we are learning for the first time.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to interacting with the BiggerPockets community!