My wife and I are about to put our WI lakehouse out as a STR this year.

No problem, though—I can get close to $100K saved by the end of the year, so I’ll be in a much stronger position.My question is, is there a specific number I should be striving for that would put me in a good position to invest in real estate?

Just you put $50,000 into your piggy bank if/when you sell the location.

Do NOT put your contact info in the letter!

Any brokerage can be the right fit for you so long as you commit to taking initiative and putting in the work.By 'work', I mean income-producing activities (lead generation and follow-up) i.e. cold calling, door-knocking, contacting your sphere of influence, networking, hosting open houses, running online advertising, marketing (paper or online), or anything else that will get you in front of prospective clients.My first broker rarely answered my phone calls and by the time she responded, I'd often already have the answer I was looking for.

As there are Californians still moving here, the vast majority are instead picking the states with low or no state income tax like Texas, Florida, or Tennessee.Although we still have a positive influx of people moving here, more people have been leaving due to rising housing costs in recent years.To put it in perspective, we saw around +45k in the 2010's.Overall, CO is basically a balanced net migration in recent years which is likely to keep home prices steady....

I’m sure there are app designers out there who’d do an amazing job getting a great BP app put together. 

all of the units were updated except one, which I did put alittle money into to bring it update to date with the others, so that would have helped the value a bit I would think almost a year later. 

This will allow you to mitigate risk on the first property but also allow you to do a cash out refi on the second, so now you have access to tax free cash that you can do with whatever you please.

Thanks for putting it together.