I am not sure what type of real estate investing you're considering, but it sounds like, with your family and busy job, you won't have a lot of time to be hands-on or personally involved. 

Property is in Granite City, tenant lost his job, and has stopped responding to texts and emails. 

Awesome, great job!

Started looking at condos, Airbnb’s now apartments. lost my job in the beginning of the pandemic, so I’m trying to make cash flow apartments my day job. my funds become available in April, so hopefully I’ll find my first apartment building in Chicago.

@Jonathan Small Nice job on this find and completion.

Also, focus on 2 years of job/income stability.Class D Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, all cashflow with little, maybe even negative, relative rent & value appreciationVacancy Est: 20%+ should be used to cover nonpayment, evictions & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores under 560 (almost 30% probability of default), little to no good tradelines, lots of collections & chargeoffs, recent evictions.

Markets, geoglobal conflicts, recession, inflation, jobs can all affect that but time will tell. 

I like the idea of diversification of my investments and I love the strategy BAM has articulated: the focus on properties with below market rents in growing areas with jobs and good schools. 

I feel like it would be great to trust a property management company on all of this, but it would be hard not to step in if you could do a better job at screening bad tenants (eg screening HUGE future problems).I initially managed properties myself, but now I delegate that responsibility to my business partner, personal assistant, or a property manager at my brokerage.Most PMs I know will send you an applicant for final approval and you can get on the phone with them and ask them questions

The article also fails to mention that overall transaction costs can actually be higher in countries where commissions are lower because the agent plays a different role, and due to needing to pay a lawyer for paperwork that agents complete here as part of their job (called a solicitor in Britain) plus VAT taxes and other closing costs need to factored in on top of the sales commissions, which we don't have here, overall costs can actually be higher even if commissions are lower.