Basic and free. 

As @James Wise and others point out; Do the basics.

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.  

There are too many people selling you on how easy, passive, and lucrative real estate investing is.I always tell people the first year or two will be bumpy.

Learn what people are doing right now in this difficult market and find a way to replicate their success.A lot of people say they are actively investing.

Others are exploring different real estate asset classes all together.Notice in that chart in the link above, today's trend isn't too different from how things looked basically until 2010.

She basically told me the same thing you said about the risk of REI investing being way too high for newbies to justify the reward and time spent.

Once you know the "basics', you can then invest OOS more successfully.If you can't afford to invest in your home area, how will you grow your knowledge of an OOS if you take a shotgun approach to where you buy?

It will familiarize you with the basic terminology and benefits.

Basically just putting a step in the middle of a disallowed transaction that is really only there with no actual profit/business/clean motive except tax avoidance...is not valid.