Save every penny you make, live with room mates, drive a beat up truck, house hack distressed properties and spend all of your spare time DIY rehabbing them.

One needs to understand how to check title on their own though.. spending 200 bucks on a title report your going to blow through a lot of 200.00s as I mentioned above not many actually go to sale.

It's updated every year and is the best $40 you'll spend as a Landlord.

I would like to use short term rentals to free up some of my time to spend with my growing family.I am interested in learning everything I can as I look for my first property.

@Mae Dungo I personally think that spending almost $20k is an exorbitant amount of money for a mentor.

Of course not all markets are you going to spend 10k on furniture and then double your rents or more than double the rent as in our case.

And he lives right across the street from the project so spends NO money on commute ..

I'd strongly recommend spending the first few months or more networking and self-educating before you consider paying for any kind of program or mentor/coach. 

Depending on your STR area, the table stakes to compete is very high right now so your furniture and amenity spend is going to be way higher than you think.

So basically, for a B minus area, for a 3 bedroom brick home you will spend 110k for a rental that brings in $1,400 per month and in a class D neighborhood Section 8 you will be all in for the same cashflow at $80k.If you extend you view to "Metro" Detroit you have more opportunities in Cities like Warren, Hazel Park, Taylor, Romulus, Eastpointe, et al,.