I've decided to not attend college, so I can achieve financial independence faster and to avoid student debt.

You could be creating unnecessary paperwork, headache, admin responsibilities, etc.This is more of a legal question, but typically I would think for a holding company you would want to list yourself as the manager of the holding company.

To avoid going through the same poor experience, keep reading.Even if someone gives you a referral here, do NOT make the mistake of assuming that the PMC will meet your expectations, just because they met the expectations of the referral source.In our experience, the #1 mistake owners make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.It's often a case of not doing enough research, as they don't know what they don't know!

Every single part of this could have been avoided if you did even a little due diligence of your own.

This way, you’re not going all-in on a new roof before you need to, but you’re also avoiding costly water damage that could eat into the savings.In other words, patch it up, keep it durable, and wait to replace only when there’s no life left in it—Tonka style!

If that is your primary focus it could convolute thinking and force unnecessary errors, in an already error prone business with a very high failure rate.

What area's would you flip in and where would you avoid? 

I'm trying to plan this out as well as possible to avoid any issues down the road.I've seen the stories where people run into issues meeting this requirement and get scrutiny from the IRS, to me it seems the two biggest red flags might be when they hire a property manager and also when they rarely go out to the property to work on it themselves, always relying on contractors.

Avoid templates at all costs, especially with laying the foundation for your business.

As it is, the current rent control laws sprinkled across CA create unnecessary challenges for new landlords.