Reading this thread, I thought that enjoying life same as consuming alcohol "should be done responsibly." 

Especially if I am going out of state, where issues will cause me more expense than being a local investment, I would require a POSITIVE cash flow investment more so than if I was investing in a local investment.Because you state you are inexperienced I want to pass along a few ideas to get you thinking about what is it your trying to achieve with real estate and then once you have that, determine what is the best property type to pursue and lastly the location (in state, out of state, neighborhoods, schools ect) to best accomplished what you want to achieve.For example, My goal investing in real estate is to provide predictable, sustainable income to allow me to live at a robust standard of living.  

Good luck…as you’ve probably seen, Seminole County prices are high and don’t or barely) cash flow unless you find off-market or pocket listings.Orlando has a pretty robust and active real estate networking group, CFRI.net, you may want to check out.Cheers!

As you probably know, my company's commercial software can do very robust DCF/IRR/MIRR pro formas, but I also provided a free set of Excel-based calculators and worksheets for readers of my "...Cash Flow..." book.

I have a sellers out in my contract for this specific purpose.. since our market is so robust virtually everything we sell is sold pre or during construction.. and the buyer all of a sudden is expecting a custom built home.. and has no regard for the fact that its MY equity and MY construction loan I am paying for  LOL..

The other thing that saved us is that Colorado has a robust market.

You are going to meet tons of great folks here as the Chicago community is really robust.

Broken education system, drugs, alcoholism and disease issues.US looks good even if it is bad..

Great software, extremely robust for the price, take the time to learn it I own 40 units and it is what we use for all of our management.

- Robust HELOC offerings- I have a good offering for HELOCs, but run into the standard hang ups of HELOCs on properties in LLCs, or HELOCs on investment properties.