From watching the market and myself investing in Bryan/College Station, people are still renting out these properties nicely.They can be leased as a whole or rented by the room and are usually in great areas, close to the university, grocery stores, and restaurants.

He can spend the next few years-ish getting a finance degree through an online school while working part time, but he just got offered a full time position helping with sales for a local wholesale real estate company. 

Here's a list of things to track:- Formal lease application- Formal signed and executed lease specific to your state- Payment history (I recommend using online rent collection like Apartments.com, RentRedi, etc)- Maintenance requests and receipts- Accounting for all rental-related expenses (repairs, utilities, etc) The more you treat it like a business, the more helpful you are to your CPA come tax time. 

When researching online, it looks there are some instances where non-vets can assume VA loans, but the veteran's entitlement would remain tied to the loan.How common is this and are there ever situations when this a win-win for both sides?

Quote from @Brendan Jones: For the homes, and or properties that you will use as a primary or a rental property one big thing I look for is infrastructure in the area, extrinsic value (I.e. hospitals in the area, schools, and job market), and the last thing is creature comforts for people (I.e. is a store to get groceries 1 hour away or 2 minutes away).

Quote from @Diana Teng: Hi all,I think my question above is pretty direct.I'm interested to buy my first rental property, and after doing a brief search I see that there are quite a number of places out-of-state (I live in NY state)  that offer affordable homes that deem to be in hot market areas right now (according to many different articles online). 

In my opinion, an in person meetup > an online connection.You may want to consider making a connection here and meeting up for coffee or attending a real estate networking event.Best of luck!

I do not know this one specifically but most courses and coaches online are a borderline scam.Couldn’t agree more.

Also just look online and steal some ideas...I used to Google Luxury Kitchens and then figure out how to do the same for less $$.You'll be fine with your experience.

Again, the BiggerPockets store has some books on this topic, or you can learn about it by watching podcasts, reading blogs, and interacting on the forum.