I dove into real estate as a college student, working in New York City as a real estate agent during the summers.

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.DM us if you’d like to discuss this logical approach in greater detail!

The City of Portland, and Multnomah County are more restrictive than most of the state for instance. 

The city required the road to be extended a few feet, along with water and sewer.

I would like to know how to read the market a lot better and learn how I can see wether or not a certain city is thriving or not, if where I purchase the duplex is thriving I'll just settle there and target SFH's there instead of moving out of state.  

There are lots of lemons in the various center city areas. 

I wouldn't bother investing outside of the big city centers, nor buying anything younger than 30 years old. 

To be honest, I´m in the Maintenance & Construction for corporate businesses for some US companies in Mexico and we do some Real Estate down here also, but it´s way much different than the US, so I have much to learn from a lot of people around here and as @Julio Gonzalez, I think this is pretty much the right pad and place to start and to break my fears to start all over again from scratchAlso, I´ld like to hear more from @Justin Brickman why he voted for his city, pros and cons, it will help to read from a local...As I said before, thank you all guys for taking the time to write in this post and share some experienceDo you plan to owner occupy. $40k will not get you a non owner occupied San Diego property unless you find some unlikely alternate financing.

The City of Detroit is block-by-block in many Class B & C areas.In our opinion, zip codes cover too large an area.We use Detroit Neighborhoods, which are much smaller than zip codes.

I guess my next question is, why Kansas City?