Spent a couple years as an LO. 

There's at least a couple a week spread out around Houston.

I never said you can't make money buying entry level single family homes in the Midwest or any market for that matter....but the investors who are most inclined to succeed are the hands on operators, not the passive investors or those paying retail price for a turn key in a lower tier neighborhood with no barriers of entry.

Quote from @David Young: My wife and I are new to this and are saving for our first property our goal is to start looking for properties in November 25, we have a couple questions, would it be wise to invest out of state for our first time investment (we do plan on physically going to see the properties to potentially invest in) ? 

Maybe a policies and procedures binder doesn't seem like an important thing with management of a couple of duplexes.

We stay in contact with this agent and I guess she made a couple of verbal offers for us after the agreement had expired. 

No problem, you'll really want to know since I ran into a couple of big ones.   

Co-living, on the other hand, mitigates this risk by creating multiple income streams.

I also hold a couple of real estate forums in the area for people like yourselves to connect with service providers, GC's, etc. 

I have done a couple of fix and flips.