I am Boston based and would like to get my feet wet.

Go for it, get your feet wet!

Then, you're likely better to stay as close to home as possible until you get your feet wet. 

If it leaks, it gets everyone wet below.Have people in VA been talking about inspections and reserves?

For example, often fire damage is water damage--they put the red stuff out with wet stuff.

The best is when they move in and immediately begin making maintenance demands for things they broke themselves, or because some man they lied about not being on the lease is living there and broke it, or one of their endless supply of children broke it  and it's like you still owe like a grand from your deposit maybe don't take such a tone when you fuss over maintenance issues you created in the first place - but God forbid you withhold whatever pithy deposit they did manage to cough up for damages because they go full throttle Jerry Springer guest in 2.2 seconds. 

Like others have mentioned I would recommend getting your feet wet with a turnkey if you're completely new to real estate investing.

People are freaking out and saying it's going to do all kinds of everything, fire will be wet, water will be hot, up will be down, home prices collapse blah blah blah.....

I'm moving overseas for a while which will make embassy scheduling tough for notarizations that require wet signatures.

If the numbers locally don't really work that well for you, it's a pretty good way to get your feet wet and use each property as a learning experience.