Or you could pay cash now and refi later.

In major cities I can get someone out for emergency service typically same day, even if I have to pay overtime for after hours work.

Not to mention, the right system will enable your tenants to pay rent online, have a tenant portal, and all the other features that both tenants and owners need this day and age. 

Some PMC's will charge a lower percentage fee, but will charge it whether tenant paying or not.

Now, you need to figure out how to find deals and pay for them.

We only needed to pay earnest money and a portion of the closing fees bring upfront investment to 12-15K.

The best strategy is to buy properties that need fixed up with hard money/HELOC, fix them up, the refi out to pay back your HELOC/hard money.

That will increase your material costs for the job and is the contractor paying for the material in their bid or are you paying for it and paying them a labor cost.

I currently use Followupboss, prop stream, I alternate between calltools and mojo, I've also tried smarter contactIm looking for a CRM that incorporates all of this but Im not paying a crazy amount.  

Things went to crap through covid and the borrower stopped paying.