I am 14 hours into the 20-hour online course offered by "RealEstateU."

Fix your cabinet with the missing door, remove the stickers from the mirror and window, close the toilet lid, sweep and mop the floors, use a wide-angle lens, and take pictures from an appropriate angle. 

We eat the first one, thy get a picture of all the glory the plumber pulled out and the second time they get billed.

Hi Alaina, welcome to the community! 

I bit the bullet and bought into to the Deal Genie with Jerry Norton and Peter Conti.

However if you are looking at commercial properties a lot of them will be owned by corps and then it will still be hard to find the actual owners!

I have purchased the following books:ABCs of Buying Rental Property The ABCs of Property Management The ABCs of Real Estate Investing The Advanced Guide to Real Estate InvestingThe Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money DownWhat order do you recommend reading them in?

The Property Manager will take half the first months rent if not the whole first months rent.  

How are you going to put money down to hold the deal?

If you decide to go the multifamily route, Real Estate lab .com is a multifamily software for deal analysis plus they have many other useful features.