I believe Chicago has great potential for nice ROI and cash flow, still you need to be careful to chose the right locations and type of property to maximize return, the rehab work to minimize maintenance and property management for a sustainable return.I have two unit buildings in the south of Chicago and single family homes in the south suburbs.

That all leads me here today... we want to get serious with investing to produce enough sustainable income to replace my husband's job.

I want you to build a long term sustainable business so you'll have the tools of wholesaling if/when you learn other areas of real estate as well.

My partner and I both are trying to delegate as absolute much as possible to keep our well paying 9-5s until we can be 100% self sustainable.

Set a target for a sustainable debt load using your bank requirements.

plus the reason i would never recommend rents under 750 is this math.your simply not generating enough gross revenue to sustain these properties.. and on top of that if you have a 600 rent PM is going to qualify them at 1800 a month.. subtract 600 for rent.. 200 to 300 for uitls and cell phone.. and you have someone living on less than 250 a week.. for food clothing insurance car etc etc... now can you live on less than 250 a week ????

Someone who uses some leverage, makes smart purchases, reinvests proceeds while they are working is likely going to come out far ahead of you 30 years from now; when you are counting on the income from 3 or 4 rental properties plus your SS to sustain you, hoping for no vacancies (one vacancy for you will be 25% vacancy rate!)

HUGE difference.2 - Commit this sequence of numbers to memory = 1073741824, and base all of your REI decisions on them.You must have a self sustaining, repeatable system in place that allows you to do the above. 

When cold enough I've seen interior pipes split within a matter of a couple hours of a heating system failure.I'm veering a little off track now but when you live in a climate that sustains -20F for weeks on end you get pretty well versed in the freeze threshold of a lot of different materials.This toilet took longer than a couple hours to finally give up but it's pretty good example of the kind of damage that can result.

They might have made what they claim there in their best year ever, but that's not a sustainable number.