I was thinking I’d start out by renting a room somewhere until I can figure out where I want to be.In the meantime, however, I’m looking for realtors, lenders that knows rehab loans and wholesalers.

Quote from @Frank Barletta: I started spending a lot of time researching new rental markets for myself and recently came across Parma, OH.

If you don't have any leads or don't know where to start here are a couple suggestions: ask brokers who people use for debt, find a mortgage broker as they have access to different buckets of capital, use a website like CoStar to look at closed transaction over the last 12 months and see who they used for debt.

I started out using property managers but was very dissatisfied with the services.

However I read books about real estate and thought that when I come to the USA, I'll start building my real estate portfolio, so here I am.I read several real estate books in the past, but now started to explore more while I'm in the USA.

REI Live is one meetup group in Sarasota put on by some major players in the area, another local one started up and has a FB group called Suncoast Real Estate Investors that was meeting monthly, there’s another larger one that meets at the Bradenton yacht club for lunch buffet monthly, and one more that meets monthly at a Holiday Inn near Der Dutchman off Bahia Vista.

I would love to connect with people in the area to get conversations started and build connections.

I am going to start listing these on other platforms like Vrbo & booking.com.

Hey, I am a new investor starting out in Birmingham, Alabama.

Hey @Henry Lazerow - I would tend to agree that most of the NW side of Chicago 2-4 units don't play out perfectly well for BRRRR deals.I always looked at any potential house hack vs. having to rent - if my overall payments were less than the rent I generally considered that a win.For me...the house hack is just the ticket into the amusement park and then the fun rides come after...getting started can be overwhelming and hard so I can see why people might take a discount.I think one of the keys to strong equity creation is square footage creation which is basically what you outlined with duplexing up or down.