Chicago Multifamily Investing - Market Entry

[Jon Rusnak]

Hey Members,

Hopefully everyone is having a great weekend.  I'm looking for some feedback from investors, agents or other real estate professional in the Chicagoland area.  

My wife and I met with a real estate agent in Chicago's West Town neighborhood to discuss purchasing a multifamily home. Based upon our preliminary research and reading different posts here on BiggerPockets it seemed like an FHA loan was a great way to get started in Real Estate Investing (this is our first property). The agent we spoke with was not a huge fan of the FHA loans and recommended putting 20-25% down which based upon current inventory in the West Town / Ukrainian Village neighborhoods would mean that we would need a down payment in the range of $140-$180k. Thats a lot of cash for a beginner.

I was hoping to get a high level understanding of the challenges involved with getting FHA financing. Has anyone gone this route before? Is this in fact a recommended route for new investors? The 20-25% downpayment wouldn't be completely unachievable but would take longer time to save up.

It seemed like this particular agent deals with a lot of wealthy investors in Chicago so perhaps is just not willing to deal with a beginner investor.  Was this a scare tactic?

If the FHA loan is not the best route to get started thats completely fine as we are open to considering different neighborhoods, changing preferences etc. Hoping you could provide some guidance and information regarding the FHA loan process, pros and cons, investing in Chicago, your stories etc. Thanks for reading.