So infilling an income gap via people who can disappear just as easily as appear seems short sighted to me. 

Once you have more experience and know if REI is right for you, then you can expand into other markets. 

You can spend $150-200k and easily hit 1%.

You could easily buy a turnkey home through a company like mine, Real Wealth Network, and its the same thing minus the 15% fee.

You could easily spend a lot of capital to start with something else but doing the house hack gets you started and your feet wet.

Good luck on the deal but make sure you know ALL of the costs before you lock it in as it can easily make a great deal look 180 degrees differently.

The great thing about living in a high cost of living area is that your salary / wages are hopefully also very high.If you are a new college grad, I would focus the next 1-3 years on increasing your salary as much as possible(gain new skills, new certifications, change employers, etc).Once you make more money, you can easily get in a position to buy a property on a more frequent basis.Best of luck!

Fast forward, and he’s fielding offers well above what he paid.. and all he did was sit on the dirt while Tesla expanded.

@Agatha Oliveira Over the last 10 years case law has been established that greatly expands the ability to redeem tax sale properties.

If you're expanding your search beyond Cleveland, you may want to check the Columbus market.