Hi all,

My name is Mike and I live in the Mayfair area of Chicago. So I've been lurking this site for a few weeks now, drowning myself in content. I have used the search function as much as I can to get answers to my questions and regretfully find myself to be another newbie who has no funds to start investing but am intrigued by wholesaling as a means to get them (I will get into this more later). I have also read tons of blogs, listened to several podcasts and attended my first REIA meeting last week. While it has all been super informative, I am hitting information overload and am still unsure of when all is said and done. I am hoping this first post will help get me over the first of many humps I'm sure. I am absolutely looking for guidance/direction and also to network and hopeful meet some local BP members here in Chicago in the near future.

Here is a brief rundown of what I am looking to accomplish, where I am thinking I should start and why. My ultimate goal is to one day own enough rental properties to cover all of my expenses so I can quit my job and live off the rental income. I have a number in mind right now but realize that may change at some point, but it's a start. Admittedly, I'm a bit nervous about having my first deal be a rental as I'm intimidated with being landlord because a) I don't have any experience, and more importantly b) because I don't have adequate funds to feel comfortable in the event that I needed to deal with any of the numerous crazy things that can happen with a tenant. I'd like to understand the game better, if you will, before I get there. To me, the two most feasible paths to get there are wholesaling or doing a fix and flip. With that said, I am really having a hard time developing my criteria and it feels very arbitrary to me because I don't know how to analyze anything. I spoke with a guy that wholesales at the REIA meeting I attended last week and he told me to find an aspiring area and the surrounding areas for a B neighborhood. I searched to better understand that grading scale but am admittedly still unsure. To help me out on my search for a farm area, I did purchase J Scott's flipping and estimating book and am reading through that to try to understand market analysis a bit better (haven't got to the rehab estimation section yet). I've also bookmarked multiple websites suggested throughout these forums (i.e. neighborhoodscout.com, census.gov, usa.com, listsource.com, etc.) and have utilized Redfin, Zillow, Realtor, you name it, to try and search demographics, get comps on sold houses and just make sense of all the data but it's not clicking. I don't really know what I'm looking for and wouldn't recognize a trend if it smacked me in the face. I continue to find myself struggling to actually develop a criteria that doesn't seem completely arbitrary. Am I overcomplicating this or missing something? Anyone else start off this way? Where am I going wrong? Any help or suggestions are appreciated.