I’d recommend listening to the straight up Chicago investor podcast for local information, going to the variety of meetups that are in this great city, and meeting a lot of the people posting here. 

Hi everyone, What type of weather damages do you see in Kansas City?

Waco Texas is a known city that has a very good Private College, Baylor University.

I navigate through cities and towns, identifying areas that are both friendly and challenging for STRs.

Tenants in many markets already believe they pay too much (contrary to recent studies that show rent to property values have never been lower for the large US cities).If my insurance costs are not double my current rates over the next couple years, I will be pleasantly surprised.  

To be honest, I´m in the Maintenance & Construction for corporate businesses for some US companies in Mexico and we do some Real Estate down here also, but it´s way much different than the US, so I have much to learn from a lot of people around here and as @Julio Gonzalez, I think this is pretty much the right pad and place to start and to break my fears to start all over again from scratchAlso, I´ld like to hear more from @Justin Brickman why he voted for his city, pros and cons, it will help to read from a local...As I said before, thank you all guys for taking the time to write in this post and share some experienceDo you plan to owner occupy. $40k will not get you a non owner occupied San Diego property unless you find some unlikely alternate financing.

Thus, we are looking into the Johnson City-Elizabethton area or the Kingsport-Bristol area.

I have a client in Kansas City that does this.

I use Beyond pricing in my vacation rental markets and Pricelabs in my city/mid-term rental markets.

Then later on purchase homes with cash (single family homes), I would like to learn how to read the market and know where a state or city is thriving but also learn where it's not.