Focus on absentee owners and start with the ones who live the farthest away and only own one property in the area since they have the least use for the property.You can also drive for dollars, looking for anomalies of disrepair and then look them up in the tax records and use a site like Spokeo to do cheap skip tracing.

Next, you need to start tracking your expenses.

I figured the PM would definitely be local to the area of the property and would need different PM's for each area, those were just the areas I'd like to invest in. 

That is a great tip! 

I'm here in the Tampa Florida area too...

White Oak color and Walnut color are the two main ones you want to focus on, depending on the rest of the design in the house!

I think you would be wise to sell and use the VA loan for your new home. 

I am working on increasing my knowledge and skills on the accounting side of investing.  

when I arrived I saw that the house in question was right next to a house that had partially burnt down.

.$300K is the new $200K.