Since you know how to swing a hammer and you won't be home all the time anyway, you can always buy a 4-plex and move into the worse unit to fix up, or ask the previous owner which tenant is the biggest pain in the *** - kick them out and move into their unit and fix it up.I'm just "down the road" in London and we're getting some traction here with a very eager group of BPers, so feel free to join us for a meet up or pick brains on the forums.

If you have no experience  and no money the three paths you mentioned up top will be very hard to get any traction.

I'm a member of Traction REIA in Tyson's VA.I'm employed as a Litigation Paralegal and I love what I do. 

But it is still the one of the most expensive.Drop the price another $25K, and be prepared to drop it another $25K in two to four weeks depending on traction.

From what I see, Traction REIA is in your area and I've heard a lot of good things about Traction in Maryland.

Host your own open houses.If no traction in x days (by the time it's 100% done), consider signing up to pay your real estate agent friend or a discount listing service to get the property on MLS.

Traction is a guru pitch.  

I'm in Falls Church so we have a growing sub-community here in NOVA.I try to go to the CAZA and Traction REIA meetings every month, you can check them out on meetup.com if you don't already know about them.

That's really a very short window for brand new investors to gain any sort of traction and successfully get something done.

The amount of capital you have isn't really enough to get much traction in the Colorado market, but could really get you rolling out there.