inherited an apartment complex and trying to salvage what a bad management company did..

[Rochelle Wilkinson]

I inherited a 60 unit multi family apartment complex from my uncle.. the apartments are located in Maryland.. we hired someone to manage them and they were stealing us blind.. I fired them and quit my job ( i owned a housecleaning business) and knowing nothing about managing a property dove in head first.. I had 13 vacancies, 2 non payers, and 1 squatter.. annual rent roll was right around $300,000 a year.. looking through old documents I can see they did not raise the rent on some tenants for almost 7 years.. I suspect this was due to lack of maintenance..we were being charged for new carpet and painting, and cleaning the apartments but after talking to the tenants they tell me when they moved in they received none of that..I immediately started making things right and making repairs.. i hired a full time handyman who is working night and day to catch up years of neglect..I have filled all 13 vacancies in the last 2 months, kicked out the squatter and collected more than $14,000 in back rent from my 2 non payers.. they know I am on site and will not be tolerating any ******** from here on out.. I have sent notices to all tenants announcing a raise in rent.. magically they all said they will more than gladly pay as they are happy to be getting new carpet, paint, and someone actually caring about the property again.. with the new tenants coming in and paying the new 2015 rates and raising the rent of the current tenants i am projecting the new annual rent roll now that we have filled the vacancies and raised the rent will be just under $700,000 by next October ( I did the math for next years rent raise also).. I will pretty much reach the ceiling of what i can charge for rent at that time and will be looking to add a community room in a space filled with old junk that we will have cleaned out 80% of our tenants are students and we will add a room with wifi, couches, a flat screen tv, netflix and hulu.. since I have no other real ammenities to add this is the best I can do.. I am thinking the initial investment will cost me around $8,000 but I will be able to charge an extra 25 per apartment with this added room.. times 60 apartments will be an extra $1,500 a month ( minus the cost of wifi hulu and netflix) leaving me with an approximate $ 1,400 a month profit times that by 12 months thats an extra $16,800.00  a year.. here is my problem.. due to the fact that i am making all of these repairs i am not really taking a paycheck right now.. and my mind is racing to be able to start buying houses in the area to rent..I am so cash strapped right now.. and I inherited this so i have no idea how to go about obtaining properties the way you guys do.. can you please steer me in the direction of a good real estate investment club in maryland and also did any of you get your real estate license to be able to be your own agent? does that even make sense or am I wasting my time?  so 1. good investment clubs in maryland 2. be a real estate agent or no?