While I do not know the specifics of the purchase or exact location, I understand the Philadelphia market well enough to place this property in a lower tier neighborhood based on the ARV Mario shared.

This is actually an interesting view, and admittedly I know nothing about this specific industry.

Another twist to mitigate would be to build one of your homes specifically to use as a model home. 

Specifically, there's job growth (Intel, Honda, Amazon, Nationwide, etc) and the population is growing (unlike Cleveland or Cincy).

Any specific blogs, people or places I need to plug-in to learn?

So then I decided to look into the possibility of opening my own practice and specializing in Real Estate specifically.

That, or do medium or short term rentals (neighborhood and condition specific though, doesn't work for every property). 

Be careful - follow the laws specific to your area.

Once you have this team in place, you should be able to invest in any market confidently.As for picking a specific market - I would go after one with an increasing job and population growth.

Would like to get honest opinions on where I should get myself looking- as specific as possible as far as towns.