As you start closing deals, you will need to reinvest your profits into mailing lists and other scalable activities to grow your business.

So he basically got a house for free, plus 24k profit to keep for himself.

What you may want to consider is bringing in an equity partner to fund a portion of the deal and have you manage it and find a way to allocate the profits to each party. 

You have to vet your tenants well and also I would implement other strategies like seller finance aka rent to own to boost profitability.

We've never had one PM company that we made a profit with.  

My breakdown is about 1/4 Section 8, 1/4 non profits and the rest are regular folks renting .

Investors  like us have a smaller profit margin. 

I suppose there is a reason agents are doing it but I cannot see this as a profitable endeavor...

While I want to maximize profit, I also want to keep my properties stable.

We calculate gross income as all dollars coming in except taxes.Our clients gross revenue is the room rate (top line) expenses minused out and then they receive their net income.Net profit (or loss) would be then when they subtract debt service, property tax, insurance, utilities, etc.