Newbie Investor Needs Help

[Robyn J.]

Hello All. I literally just stumbled upon this forum while attempting to research real estate investing. I've put work on hold to dig into these forums and you guys are such a wealth of knowledge and experience, I'm hoping you guys can send some my way as well.

About me, I'm a new-ish investor. I own a condo (that I rent out to tenants) in a trendy (and expensive) Brooklyn, NY neighborhood and rent a separate apartment in the same building.

Recently, I've been contemplating selling my condo and buying a multi-unit property as a way of investing but, more importantly, increasing my passive income/cash flow as I am particularly cash poor these days. As such, I will need to use the proceeds from my condo sale to finance my next purchase. To understand my options, I've talked with a couple of brokers  and it seems that I'd likely net about $160-$180K from the sale of my condo to use as a downpayment.

I make a great salary ($300K base) but have some debt I'll pay off before buying again. 

That said, I'm thinking that 1.5M is as high as I'll be able to go to get into a multi-unit property but in the areas of Brooklyn that I want to live in, that will only yield me a 2-family unit, if I'm lucky. And that configuration can hardly be considered a house hack as I'd for sure pay at least what I pay in rent ($3600) as my portion, and likely much more. 

I'm open to buying/investing elsewhere (and continuing to rent in Brooklyn) but am incredibly nervous about being far away from my property and wouldn't even know where to begin. 

I'd love any thoughts/advice. Should I give up my Brooklyn brownstone dreams and buy elsewhere? Is 1.5M even realistic with my DP and salary in prime-ish BK? Is it worth it? Does it make more sense to continue to rent in BK and look at other markets to buy where I can cash flow quickly? If so, where? How? What would that look like? Where should I be looking? How do I get started?

Help?!