@Bridget HustonWelcome to the community and be ready for a huge amount of information at your finger tips.

The taxes here are high, but the price to rent ratio is exceptional and there is a huge demand for quality housing in certain neighborhoods.   

You don't need the huge fridges and ranges untill you get to a higher price point IMO...

Most who make $500k don't have nearly enough dry powder on the sideline to scale a real estate business quickly enough without making huge personal sacrifices for an extended period of time.

Yes it's a huge problem.You should fix this correctly now.Open the walls and put in proper sound reducing insulation.

Being able to shuffle leads from MTR to MTR is a huge bonus and you can benefit from the economies of scale faster. 

That says huge red flag to me.

. - Rents are also a function of supply - 2024 saw the most new construction of multifamily units in American history (nearly 575,000 estimated 2024 deliveries of new multifamily inventory), and 2025, while not a record setting year, will see deliveries top 500,000 again - a huge supply increase. 

Contractors play such a huge role in real estate projects.

They wouldn't be coming to you.So you can get a gold standard investment advisor and give up .5 to 2% of your return, or you can send the money to one or more huge index funds like Vanguard 500 index fund and sleep well at night.But if you think you have something of value other than the generic value of money, you will be sorely disappointed.