I want to set my self up in the beginning so I can scale every year or every two years.

We pay a percentage to our brokerages, have marketing and education expenses, and are self employed so we pay for our health insurance, gas, etc.  

My A class that I own I self manage I have a RE agent that puts them up they find a tenant I require 700 plus fico so that weeds out 90% of renters and then I set them up on auto pay and if they have an issue we send handyman.. to be fair my units are basically new construction and townhouses in HOA's in the Desert ( vegas) so there simply is not a lot of maintenance. there is A class in every city its just that investors get so focused on  positive cash flow they dont buy those for rental purposes so they miss out on the best rental tenants.. the higher the cash flow on paper the lower the quality of the units.. its a fact..

I’m a believer that with sufficient knowledge, and sometimes capital, real estate ownership can be “worked” to obtain an enhanced return on invested capital, WITHOUT increasing risk.  

Maybe add on Booking.com but after that it's the law of diminishing returns - lots of work/time for just a guest or two.If you are self managing I would limit the amount of platforms to the top few because it could get overwhelming tracking the property on all the various sites because they all work a little bit differently.

This is another reason we like Self Storage. 

Once I take ownership, I will be self-managing. 

I bought my stuff cheap for cash, most over a decade ago.We still find distressed properties and motivated sellers willing to get rid of unwanted properties cheap that we fix up and rent out.I also use cash from my self directed IRA to also buy properties for cheap.

Right now I have 4 units under management and 2 units that I self manage.

If you are going to self-manage, check out the RPOA for support and information on local and state-wide issues affecting landlords.