If you don't care about appreciation, the landlords in the middle part of the country are able to find cash flow with low down payments. And by cash flow, I mean a property that pays all of it's expenses: mortgage, vacancies, taxes insurance, repairs, management fees, and scheduled maintenance.

Look at Ohio, Indiana, The Dakotas, and Texas.

You have to shop carefully and not pay asking price.

In Ohio and Indiana, properties are cheap to buy, you can get cash flow, but you aren't going to get any apreciation. I'd suggest that you stay away from bad areas in the big cities; they aren't a good place to invest.

Iron clad rule: never buy anything that has the landlord paying for utilities, unless you have the funds to separate them and make the tenants pay their own.

In Texas, you will pay more for the properties, but have a chance of some appreciation. Multi-family buildings seem to be good investments in Texas. Texas also has landlord tenant laws which are more favorable to the landlord than you will find in most other states.

In Oregon, where I am, if I can buy a property that pays it's own mortgage, I've done well. That isn't anywhere close to cash flowing. So I use very large down payments to reduce my mortgage payment, and that is the way I get properties to pay their own way. However, I get very healthy appreciation. It's a trade off.

It's not that I know so much about real estate markets in areas away from where I live, but I hang out and talk to other landords and hear what they are doing.