Honestly I think you're looking in the wrong state @Rory Kinnear. When I was in California I decided real estate prices were too expensive (impossible to cashflow with a high LTV) and bought in CO (which only a few years ago was far cheaper!)
Now that I'm in Denver it's hard to find cashflowing properties with low % down so I'm planning to put most of my capital (aside from house hacks) towards out of state investments. In my case I grew in upstate NY so I'm familiar with Albany, Binghamton, Rochester, etc. but there are deals to be had in many cities right now (KC, Buffalo, Houston, Cleveland, etc.)
For out-of-state investing there are basically two paths:
1) Lower return/easier - invest using an established turnkey company such as the ones listed on Jay Hinrich's site. They'll handle renovations, property management, etc. You just sign the check and you'll have a cashflowing property. The downside is that if they do most of the work your returns will reflect that. You will, however, probably still get better returns than the stock market.
2) If you want higher returns then find a real estate agent familiar with investment properties and start shopping in an OOS market (find a good one by looking through Zillow Research data). Make sure to start hunting for a property manager at the same time so that as you start to acquire properties you'll have somebody to professionally manage it. This is the route I'm taking at the moment - but it's not a "passive" investment, I'm actively managing my managers & various projects remotely. You'll need to be the orchestrator if you go this route.
Given that you don't have much disposable monthly income you should be looking for ways to increase that your income as your top priority. That will come from high cashflowing areas like the midwest, not appreciation markets like LA, SF, NYC, etc.
