@Kevin Olson, I second what @Matthew Couto is saying about heading to a meetup! On the tail end of your last response, you threw a few options out for reply.
Single Family home (1 door) to flip "and rake in the profits"....but taxes will eat that up- even if you do everything right in the flip (which has a low probability). Or go for a multifam. (2, 3, or 4 door)? So let me answer a question with a question...are you willing to house hack (aka, living in one of the unit while repairing the others or living in a single family home and renting out the other bedrooms)? That's the lowest risk decision, as you need to personally pay for shelter, yourself. So it might as well be paying down the mortgage for your investment property. Frankly, my best advice is to take a network with other investors in real life. And if you feel comfortable learning under one or two of them, offer to help in whatever their pain points are, so you can see the inside of their operation. Build trust. Build value. These guys aren't your competitors- they are just in the same marathon as you. And no matter how big their operation is, they have their eye on the guy or gal doing it better and bigger than them. And listen to the podcasts...start from episode 1 and go all the way through. They're free. And all of those guests are here on the forum. So you can ask them questions to what you didn't understand.
Lastly, get the books. Likely, you've already read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." It's almost a baptism into real estate, to do so. But Brandon Turner's books are excellent for just starting out and beyond. Right now, I'm getting through the BRRR audiobook as I'm literally swinging the hammer on my latest rehab (I don't need to physically do the rehab...its just my happy place!) and am gathering nuggets that I'd rather not gain through hard knocks.
Frankly, I would not start this race with a sprint to the first door under your belt, unless you were house hacking. And even then, keeping an eye on the credit cycle, unless a deal was just a no brainer, I'd work on building my credit to be the best it could be and pay down high percentage credit as much as possible. Right now, you could throw a stone anywhere and hit a lender. And while they aren't titled as such, they might as well be calling their loans "ninja's" as in "we don't bother to look to hard at your income or job history or credit history"...and we all now know that those loans were really sub-prime or usery loans. My point is that a good credit rating and liquidity will be much more valuable in the next year or two, than it is now. So why not invest in the thing that isn't valued as much (as in the mantra of buy low and sell high), by investing in yourself (education) and learning how to make a real estate business operation or system.
So, that's my 2 cents. As always, consult ppl smarter than me!
