If you have not run your own business beyond real estate before, I strongly recommend that you get in touch with SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives) at www.score.org.They are a free resource (part of SBA) that will help you to evaluate the financials of the company you're looking at buying, build a business plan and to understand what you're getting into. 

I am hoping to like many others build up a good retirement through real estate and are looking for opportunities to learn good practices, soft skills and gain confidence and build repeatable systems that can scale. 

We want to own property.My father is retiring after working in the post office for forty years and is a widower.

My wife quit her W2 in 2017 after I retired in 2015.

Steve, the question should be more along the lines of whether you want to build a retirement fund vs try to bring in passive income now.

It's a business with incredible value in terms of stable, predictable revenue and as a retirement asset. 

(RE certainly did NOT make me rich as I had hoped and now I am ready to sell 2 rentals and retire sooner than later)

And with the peak boomers retiring soon, the housing demand might weaken not long thereafter.

I am approaching retirement in 3 years and want to buy rental properties to offset my W2 income.

My goal is to continue earning 10% CoC in buildings that will appreciate substantially by the time I retire (~30 yrs from now).Any advice would be immensely appreciated!