I really believe that you should have an attorney if you're going to be doing "terms deals" in Pennsylvania.Here are my rules of thumb if you will...If it's mostly "landlord tenant area",  a C D area then I will only think about buying and holding and renting out or wholesaling flipping.If the property is more of an A B area, chances are it doesn't need a lot of work, it's a pretty house in a good area, not a lot of rentals, mostly owner occupied.If it's a pretty house, then you need to have some tools such as subject to, wraparound mortgage, lease option, etc. to make some money.New people need to know their "market rent" and their "fair market value" really well, and having access to sold comps is really helpful so that you can do your research.If you're serious about this business, you will devote your time and walk through 100 properties as fast as you can so you know what "asking prices" are and to know what "actually sold prices" areThe fall and winter are excellent times to go after expired listings and canceled listings, and help the homesellers solve a problem using creative financing. 

Thank you for the kind words - at 75 years old now - I remember years ago when this I became motivated to invest in real estate (really -  my motivation was to make money and quick my low paying job)  I use to take every class and seminar on real estate investing and would read as much as I could all the time about real estate investing -  that is when I was 21 years old, some of the information was junk (seminars leaders trying to make money selling courses and useless information)  and some were really great, but at the time I didn't know what I didn't know, I finally got the nerve and courage to go out and try some of those crazy formulas they were talking about - and guess what - some of those far out creative financing techniques started to work for me - it was really scary because I started to make money - more money than I ever thought was possible with my limited formal education back than, I discovered I made more money than the president of the company I worked for - needless to say - I quit that job and devoted more time to making offers and collecting those large assignment fees - now even today at my age I continue to make offers - at this time the offers have lots of zeros in them ---- so all that good and useless education  paid off.You best teacher is the market - get out there and make offers, look at 50 houses - but don't make offers on those properties until you find the one deal that is absolute right for the profit making - just keep good records - listen to the sellers, do your comps, learn how to write "skinny contract offers", practice "Control and Roll" principals of controlling real estate with no money and assign your contracts using accelerated sales methods. 

University of Washington Alumni, wife and daughter at home, and excited to be able to devote my time to investing again as opposed to building my home. 

I hope to quit my job and do this well over time devoting all my time and extra time and all resources in to this.

If you don't need the cash flow to live off of now, devote it all to paying down your notes and by the time you need your investment income (say after retirement), you can have a free and clear portfolio of cash flow properties that you don't need to mess with at all.

Narrowing down the type of investment that suits your current situation with regard to time, finances and risk (even if you delve into other REI areas later) can really help whittle down the amount of time you need to devote to research and decreases the probability of analysis paralysis.Best of luck in your new adventure!

If you have that kind of devotion to your realtor, they will have that devotion to you.Wholesalers –I hear this all the time on BP podcasts where you mail out yellow letters, meet the owners and find that they are better off listing the house.

Collecting supplemental passive income from rentals now is part-time while he is working;Wholesaling and fix-and-flipping is very time consuming, so I can see why it would make sense to want to start renting out properties before being able to devote the time it takes to be a full-time investor.Where it seems slightly "backwards" is that the money to buy the rentals can usually come from assigning contracts and the profits from flips...

Can you carve out a couple days a week to devote to RE sales and getting into it slowly?

If you're selecting your own tenants here you'll be devoting a lot of your time to tenant screening/selection/showing process.