Hey Alex, I'm a new fix & flipper, so take my advice with a big grain of salt.
I chose fix & flip because I wanted to focus full time on REI, could afford to spend several months getting up to speed, and it's faster in terms of cash flow compared to rentals. The downside is it it takes a lot of hustle and marketing to build a deal pipeline, and it's more than a bit intimidating if you're like me and don't know much about construction (the biggest cost minefield besides the price of the house itself).
Denver is an incredibly hot and competitive market, so wholesaling and fix & flip require you to be fast and fearless. It's also not cheap. DC & New York are equally competitive and even more expensive. I don't know about Spokane, but one thing you can do is just Google for median home prices for those areas and look at Trulia stats for # of transactions, days on market etc.
If I were younger and didn't have much money, I would probably spend six months or so just going to meetups and reading every book I can on the subject. Listen to podcasts too. Bigger Pockets' is good, but it covers a huge variety, so much that it can be overwhelming. You might want to pick a particular area that interests you and go deep on that. For example, I've been working my way through the entire Flipping Junkie podcast because it focuses just on fix & flip.
Avoid high priced seminars, but it's probably okay to spend money on less expensive online training courses of various types.
But read books and most importantly meet a lot of people first. Don't worry about gaps in your knowledge. Ask questions about the things you don't know about. In my experience most people in REI are very friendly and helpful.
Also, go to as many open houses as you can. Get a feel for what to look for when buying a house and the relative value of various neighborhoods.
