Seminole for Example has a lot of great traffic and tons of spots to eat, drink, socialize for adults and kids.I know Cape Coral is picking up in terms of STR's with the complettion of the 7 Mile Island and more construction lately. 

Buying a cheap, random property in the midwest just is not going to do anything for you.

I encourage people to invest either where they live, or within an hour or so, because there are so, so many threads on BP from folks who bought a random OOS property just to "get a deal" and immediately regretted it.

Networking with other local investors to learn from their mistakes.Building your network on social media.And more...

Always been social and gregarious but never from a financially strategies standpoint.

The valuations on them appear to be completely arbitrary and in many instances the company seem randomly selectedWe had one recently from someone else who provided the opinion and the comps were 7 miles away and from another jurisdiction - whereas this property while in a more rural area had considerable sales that could have been used.If you use them to get an idea for property condition I find them to have some value but since they have no interior inspection reports, they are at best just a random guess of the value which could be off by 100%

Take this 💥just-closed renovated property for example💥:With my query of "22757 Charlemont Pl, Woodland Hills, CA 91364 5/4/2400-3050,0.6,300" we get an ARV Estimate that is ~4% off, and I picked this at random just scrolling through recently closed in my areaAnd the Market Stats $/sf of renovated property in that Zip Code matches up pretty well, so I know the ARV estimate is realistic:You can also run Agent Stats to find/get in touch with the real top-agents in that area so you can triple-verify everything and/or list it with them when you are done.With the above, I am able to quickly vet every new deal that comes my way and spend more time on the good ones.

I'm not sure if you're working with a financial advisor but if you're retired, receiving 1099R income, maybe social security, plus income from other sources you definitely want to speak with an advisor.

Given that there are two ways to grow your business, organically, posting here and on social media, I for instance have a blog, now both in my experience and talking with people who have or had tried to build that way, it’s wayyyyy harder now than before, interest in real estate is way down, I know a few people with pretty large YouTube following’s views are way down.

90% of the GCs you meet through social media or those job sites like Angie list they all stink.