Would that be an example of a "guru" taking advantage of people?

After a year of stress and headaches, he sold it off and swore never to invest in an area he didn’t know again.From what I’ve read in the Wall Street Journal, investing locally gives you a huge advantage because you understand the market firsthand.

With your experience I'd think you could do great in either, but you will have a big advantage in the asset management portion of the investment which is huge. 

You don't say where you are located....but a big advantage of the mini-split is that it can cool the unit as well as heat it.

The former provides a much lower return on equity but is simpler and easy to achieve over the long run.The latter is much more time consuming and risky, but provides high returns and a lot of tax advantages. 

A good deal will always be a good deal so it shouldn't stop you from taking advantage of an opportunity but depending on what you're looking to do and where the properties are you may want to budget for an extra month or so when selling on the back end.

As @Bruce Lynn highlighted, you'll want to take advantage of any time you have now to start taking your pre-licensing courses and exams so you can get started right after graduation.While you're doing that, I'd also recommend reading/listening to Hyper Local, Hyper Fast agent by Dan Lesniak.

It's about women helping women not taking advantage my charging 20K 

If you have enough rentals or do it for long enough, you'll run into folks who take advantage of the system.

Depreciation helps reduce the taxable rental profit, potentially bringing it to zero or even creating a loss, which can carry forward to offset future rental income or other capital gains.For high wage earners, other tax strategies could include leveraging cost segregation studies to accelerate depreciation on rental properties through bonus depreciation, taking advantage of tax-deferred exchanges (like a 1031 exchange), or maximizing deductions related to property expenses (mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance, repairs, etc.).