We have been brainwashed to believe what is not real and to listen to our family/parents who have been telling us the wrong things but they grew up in different times. 

@Anita MuhammadOne of the reasons why I picked real estate investing and self-managed local landlording as my way into real estate investing is that I was kind of born into it -- my grandfather ran apartments this back in his day and I grew up on stories told by my mother about the life.

My mom was an office manager for a small mortgage broker my entire life and as such, I basically grew up in that office.

@Matthew Daly    That's great, I grew up in Redlands myself.

Remember to target people with last market sale date of 3+ years - this number depends on how much the market grew but you are really trying to avoid cash buyers from the last couple months/years, they won’t want to see it :)

@Richard S. by the way I live in Vermont but grew up in Rockville, MD!

The management part of rentals and the physical repair work are different.To answer your question about repairs, personally, I grew up in a family who always did our own construction.

But like I said, I grew up there and know some of the people still living in the same areas I’m buying!  

Once I hired a coach / mentor my portfolio grew from 10 properties to 40 in 1 year.

I grew up in the bay area and it was impossible for me to find anything that made sense numbers wise.