I totally get wanting to scale fast and understand the excitement, but take it easy a bit dude and do what you can and give yourself some opportunity to learn before you lose everything you got!

Or how does the rehab work exactly (post closing or during and how does it factor into the total price at purchase, ie what you have to have in cash to get this done?)

For cap ex, vacancy, and maintenance, 5% each or 15% total would be pretty common amounts to budget.So, that means about 25% of your income rent will go to the PM, cap ex, vacancy, and maintenance.

Hi! I’m here to learn as much info as I can to begin investing in real estate.  I’m not in New Haven, I’m in New London County.  I’m actually surprised there’s not a southeast CT forum location.  I’ll probably be nosi...

Understand the fees involved and calculate the total cost for an entire year of management so you can compare the different managers.

If your current homes have the potential of a total of $4k per month gross : maybe $3k current net, then are you happy with that number in retirement or would you like more like $5k or higher? 

But managing 50 properties is a totally different beast than 5. 

I recommend to not take on hard money loans and investing with others who can also invest when it will not necessarily (totally) hurt them or me in the end is a hard lesson to learn but it is a great recommendation.

If I make a lump sum payment of $10,000 towards the principal, the future monthly payments of $5000 should go a lot more towards the principal since there is less total balance to calculate the interest. 

It's not a common thing that people go through when a tornado hits your house unexpectantly and having to do a total renovation.