Find out what niche you want to tackle.... wholesaling (I HATE WHOLESALING, but sadly...

I am currently in the research/educating myself phase and am also working toward getting my real estate license before tackling my first project.

Subdividing is an obstacle, but if you tackle it and know what you're doing, there's a lot of opportunity. 

Determine if you want to tackle those problems, and if so, take that off of the offer purchase price.- Find the comp rates of similar properties in the area.- Run the numbers: current rent, current taxes / utilities / expenses / etc.

Your comment about long-distance investing is a good one and actually brings light to the fact that any type of investing is going to have its own set of obstacles, it's just a matter of which ones you want to tackle. 

What type of REI do you want to tackle first?

It's not the first time I hear someone express an interest in "joining forces" to tackle mobile home investing.

Any sort of help with a general approach to tackling this would be great! 

Welcome Steve, sounds like you have a lot going on which makes it difficult to tackle a response to.  

OK, maybe a couple veterans could help me out...im a first time investors and am wondering about where to go with my first investment..now im from the detroit area which was hit hard and doesnt have the greatest economy so my question would be,in a perfect world lets say that we have 2 identical homes one going for around 5-10k but needs 5 to 10k of work and one going for around 20 to 25 k but only needs a little bit of work...would it be worth it to save a few thousand dollars and but the fixer upper..now i do consider myself pretty handy and have tackled home improvement jobs before and have a pretty good network of experts in the home improvement field...i do plan on making a career out of this and figure we are gonna need the tools anyway as well as the experience....but i believe the first move is the most important which is why i leave it up too some seasoned veterans for help..thank you for your inputsincerely, ME