If its single family I wouldnt bother with a manager but 2 or 3+ tenants in same building I would consider it depending on how hands off you want to be on the tenant issues and how handy you are

You can get solid cash-flowing single families in the 90-120k price range and duplexes in the 130-180k price range.

My single family home is rented, but I got lucky getting the bare end of good interest rates, and I made sure rents would cover mortgage upon leaving.  

I'm the single breadwinner for my family (2 kids) so I don't know if I'd have the time and energy to both run this rental and manage my work so I can reach the income level to handle the bigger mortgage comfortably.I feel like this chance for us to have a rental property with positive cash flow won't come often so I really want to explore it.

I never said you can't make money buying entry level single family homes in the Midwest or any market for that matter....but the investors who are most inclined to succeed are the hands on operators, not the passive investors or those paying retail price for a turn key in a lower tier neighborhood with no barriers of entry.

Quote from @Casey Wilson: Hi there, I was wondering if any Detroit-metro experts from the PB community could offer advice on what areas in the Detroit-metro area might be worth exploring for rental properties (ranging from single family homes to 5+ unit apartment complexes).

You need to know the law like the back of your hand, have policies and procedures in place to deal with problems swiftly/accurately/legally every single time, and be prepared to deal with tenants that push back hard or try to take you to court.

Purchase price: $50,000 Cash invested: $50,000 Single family brrrr

There's other items such as this where it may be helpful to talk to a CPA/EA for a little tax planning, especially since you'll likely get caught up in the passive activity loss limitations if taking bonus on a single rental property as I often see.It's also useful to mention that even if you do the cost seg study (I'm assuming you're doing one to be talking about this), you'll still benefit from accelerated depreciation in the form of shorter useful lives on the assets where you received bonus from.

Assuming you currently rent right now, and you are buying the single SFR as a primary, the 3-unit should just be designated as investment and you should be able to use the rents to offset the payment (up to basically 'zero-ing' it out, on paper).