I recommend checking out Milwaukee for lucrative cash flow deals within a reasonable drive. 

I believe this area is up & coming.Although I'd like to make money, profit is not my driving factor & I may keep the house.  

It was farther from town than ideal and would be farther for most to drive to work and hence slightly more difficult to keep rented.  

One tip that I picked up here is while you are starting out and saving money for your investments, start driving / visiting areas you would like to invest in so you get a feel for prices, rents , house conditions etc, and visit and look at lots of homes and open houses so your eye get used to looking at repairs / upgrades that are normal in a particular market.

I would love to also help other understand the power of real estate, so I could also use this as a training tool for others to also help them learn.  

If so I would recommend "driving for dollars".

Hi Michael,It's a bit of a drive for you, but you might want to check out this event that @Mark J. is putting together tomorrow evening:https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/26...I'll be there and I'm hoping to learn a bit more about the Tampa area foreclosure process and finding potential flip deals as well.  

I trust my skills in due diligence and analysis, I check with my gut and if there is value and I believe in it then I go for it.   128 Chestnut (drive by shooting death on chestnut couple months ago) is an example.. on top 5 worst problem homes in Medford. 10 years+ with no power to the building. 

Not sure were these folks learned their sales training but that generally does not cut it.So that's my feed back on direct mail and building a buyers list that actually will buy something.And in all my years of investing and buying property I think I might have bought less than 10 properties from an actual wholesaler...

The Skinny Offer usually is understood and accepted by sellers of residential and land owners.Commercial Long Form Contract Offer, this is only three pages, but has everything in it that is needed to make the deal work and to will defend the investors position in court if it every comes to that.Locator Program, a networking system with trained Locators (neighborhood people and others who want to make extra money in real estate but don't want to spend the money or time learning how to be an investors), a good Locator is capable of supplying many potentially profitable leads.