Just look for a local bee club.  

You can meet note investors at conferences, investment clubs, and conventions and meet them face to face.

I was fortunate enough this weekend to Hot Rack another 2 rental homes; 2 current tenants moved out and 2 new tenants moved-in (with a bit of craziness of repairs in between) the next day.

(In our experience, when the owner has some cash to sink into the building, you can often do this in three months but will run the building financially in the red, so since we had to keep it in budget, we systematically worked through a host of tenant problems.)Fortunately, due to having great relationships with long term vendors, we were able to get a lot of the work done at a fraction of the cost some vendors would charge us and were able to really spread out the cost of these repairs.

I am fortunate that my cousin has a very large HELOC, which is the kick start.

I was fortunate to have paid off all my student loans in college while working multiple paid internships part time jobs and being a RA.

Heres the Iowa REIA http://www.reiclub.com/real-estate-clubs/iowa.htmlBP has links to two Iowa investment groups two, and a thread on it: https://www.biggerpockets.com/rei/iowa-real-estate...

I can find relatively cheap homes in places like Elizabeth but market is extremely competitive there and it is somewhat of an exclusive club of investors who have access to the sweetest deals. 

You can get listed as additional insured on the renters renter insurance, but you are placing your fortunes in the hands of a tenant.

For the mortgage, I just google "mortgage calculator" and use their template:For a insurance on a SFR rental, I generally estimate 0.2% annual premiums (0.002 times the purchase price), but since I suspect the Oak Park area has had a high number of claims (based on the various burnt out properties from squatters) I bumped it up to 0.3%:  $250,000 x 0.003 = $750For taxes I usually use Zillow:So in most areas, I'd just take 464 and divide by $29116 to get a tax rate of 1.6%   However, some counties have more detailed info online and, fortunately, Sacramento is one of them.