I'm asking because I hear all the time that trying to invest in NYC, the game is different and they always speak about investing out of state, a couple of hour drive away.

depending on your marital status you can get 250k for single and 500k for married .. its the I have done it 5 times in the last 25 years.. its a game changer let me tell you 

After you've been at this for a while, you develop a deep disdain for people who need to spend premiums for bigger and better houses for their personal living situation before they have build an unassailable financial position -- those people are marks in the real estate game, not players.Real estate can be a hell of a passive wealth maintenance strategy.

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First post here, and noob in the game of real estate investing. 

My wife and I took his class back in 2011 and it was a game changer.

It's good at a minimum to have a very short list.  3 out of those 4 you can probably select prior to purchasing something, the contractor piece is a bit more complicated depending type of project & size, you may be dealing with different contractors. 

In short, in real estate you can control how you allocate fixup funds, tenant selection, etc., but lots of variables (as Charles mentions) are beyond an owner's control. 

You also don't want to get into the game of discounting rent. 

You'll find that quite a few engineers turn to real estate as it's just a numbers game and we're all good at math.