We have a meet up each month

Buy a house (up to four units) right where you are and rent out all the spare units or rooms.

Maybe you just want to fix up places and do flips.I would consider reading this beginner's guide, it is a lot of information but will help you get a good over view of different niches, financing and education. 

@Sean Grabow you can look up @Josh Caldwell from the Pittsburgh Reia group.

Even though I have done my own research, I still came up empty handed.  

If your tenant is a decent person who has fallen on hard times, then you they often move out long before the Sherriff shows up.

Or should I save up separately for my first rental property and keep my personal residence out of this?

You will quickly realize there is a lot of information out there, whenever, you're thinking of starting to invest don't get held up by paralysis by analysis.

We ended up closing at 240, but I believe we could have easily gotten 260 if we had listed at 249 and created a bidding war.I hope this helps!

So after 1.5 years of searching, putting in offers, losing deals after inspections, yesterday I finally closed on my first investment property.I put together a document of all the lessons I learned that I did not know prior, despite countless hours of investigation on my end.