Newbie investor, first investment (LOTS of questions)

[Tim Park]

Hi everyone, I'm new here! Quick intro: I'm 26M, and have been trading in the stock market for a while now and am looking to (1) generate nontrivial monthly cash flow and (2) diversify some of my money out of the stock market. If it's important, I do have the bandwidth to do this full time.

Apologies in advance. A lot of what you are about to read will be incredibly naive, uneducated, and probably overly optimistic. I am looking first and foremost for education and I've found that getting over myself and asking potentially dumb questions is an effective way to get it. (Also, sorry for the wall of text).

I'm a complete newbie to real estate, never had a property before. I'm in the SF Bay Area and would prefer to buy outside of California. I'm looking to buy a small apartment building or MFR with several units. I am working with ~$3MM in capital so if I'm understanding things correctly I can leverage that to ~9-12MM in buying power. Is an apartment building as a rental property unrealistic and overzealous for a complete newbie? If I do want to skip SFR and jump into MFR, should I start with something smaller (~4-8 units), with a smaller investment but for educational purposes? I want to do this right, and am willing to spend as much time on education as is necessary, whether that be weeks, months, or years (though I expect to never be done learning).

I have this thought which may be completely wrong: a single multiunit property with $X NOI seems easier to manage than N separate properties that each have roughly $(X/N) NOI.

I've been reading the beginner articles here, but am feeling directionless when it comes to actionable steps to take. I've laid out a rough high level outline below and would appreciate heavy criticisms and corrections. If those criticisms are "you aren't ready for something like this", so be it, but I'd appreciate it if those kinds of criticisms are more like "you aren't ready for this, but here are some resources to educate yourself more" or “you aren’t ready for this, but here are some ideas for a more approachable first investment”.

My primary question is: How does the following outline look? Are there steps missing? Are there unnecessary steps?

Each step also has subquestions.

High level outline:

1. Explore target markets

1. I have family in Aurora, CO and San Antonio, TX that know those areas fairly well so am considering starting with one of those two.
2. I will probably end up having a separate post with questions about exploring my target market.

2. Find a mortgage broker, real estate attorney, escrow officer, accountant, insurance agent, contractor, realtor, property manager, and handyman

1. This list was taken from the BP ultimate beginner's guide. Is it exhaustive? On the flip side, are any of those team members superfluous?
2. For each team member: do I need to find one local to my target market? Or does location not matter? (I assume most of these should be local to the market)
3. For each team member: How do I go about finding someone beyond just searching on Yelp (or, is Yelp actually pretty good for this)? Networking in investing clubs? Networking on BiggerPockets?
4. Is it necessary to assemble a team before moving on to any of the next steps?

3. Incorporation 

1. Is this something that should be done for a property of the size that I'm looking for? Can I rely on a good attorney to guide me through this?

4. Find a property

1. Do I just wait for the realtor to suggest buying opportunities to me? Is LoopNet the go-to resources for quickly searching for these kinds of properties?
2. I will probably end up having a separate post with questions about evaluating a property.

5. ??? (I feel like there should be more steps here but I don't know what they are)

6. Close the deal

1. Can I rely on a good realtor to walk me through this process?

7. Find tenants

1. Can I rely on a good property manager to handle the bulk of this, or should I be handling most of this myself?

8. Ongoing maintenance

1. Can I rely on a good property manager to handle the bulk of this, or should I be handling most of this myself?

Again, sorry for the wall of text. Please, please, please let me know if you think I’m completely out of my depth and have any suggestions as to where I should direct myself. If anyone has any other general tips, I’d appreciate those as well. Thanks in advance to those who respond, and happy to be here as part of the community!