North Newark Rental Property Investment

[Xiao Xiao]

Hi,

I'm a new joiner of BiggerPockets and I'm looking to buy my first investment property.

I'm looking to buy a rental property which is already in relatively good shape requiring no or little work (I have no experience or intuition on rehab and the cost, trying to avoid starting from there.). The equity/cash return may not be stellar, but with leverage I'm seeking something close to or hopefully better than 8%+ cash-on-cash return assuming zero appreciation.

I live in Harrison NJ and I'm mainly looking at adjacent areas that I'm familiar with or potentially I can get familiar with: Kearny, Harrison and Newark, I found the price and tax at Harrison and Kearny killing the cash flows and it's very difficult to get numbers working even on paper.

I hear Newark being tricky given certain neighborhood can be rough and it can vary block-by-block, while I did hear people talking about Newark being a 'gold mine'. After some homework I decide to focus on north/south ironbound and north Newark (around BranchBrook park area). I did find certain properties with numbers working out, and relatively speaking I find ironbound expensive compared to north Newark, however my familiarity with north Newark is limited thus I would like to seek advise:

For first-time investor seeking a cash-flow generating property in a reasonably safe community, is north Newark a recommended choice? To figure out security conditions at different neighborhoods, I'm using this crime map here:    https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/nj/newark/crime

Do people find it being a good reference?

Thanks and looking forward to learn from everybody!