Are you investing in their fund or buying a note from the site ?

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the ease of property management when you live on site vs being somewhere else. 

He took me from site to site on several properties at all phases, bought me lunch, took me out for a drink once, etc.

So, I could walk upstairs and dig out all the links and contacts and web sites for the research I did on self storage and post it here for you.... but I just sat down, opened an adult beverage, I'm lazy, and besides searching Google for all this will be half of the fun.

Is investing into the States much more complicated than investing out of state?

I'm aware of using realtor sites like Zillow and Trulia to make comps, but wanted to see if there were any other ways. 

There’s many brutal experiences from true disgruntled owners and tenants described here and in other sites such as google and yelp that I read and that are in line with my experiences  -2 COMPANIES, SAME OWNERSTexas Turnkey Properties (texasturnkeyproperties.com) and Real Property Management Preferred (htownrpm.com) are 2 companies owned and operated by the couple Shawn and Joni Wolfswinkel.

The wealth of knowledge on this site is amazing.

Each city gives you different headaches, forcing you to shed money like crazy.Plan about $200k for site built, expect rent of around $2500/month, plus appreciation of about $400k, just estimate.For Hayward, doing a main house expansion (900 to 2000 sf) and an ADU (1000 sf) at the same time.

I still remember people camping out at builder's site for a chance to be in a lottery to buy a new house, crazy times.As for your case, 500K for a quad is like Phoenix prices, doesn't seem like midwest prices to me.