At what point does vacancy percentages become a concern or is it really only one part of the puzzle?

I have to start somewhere, and think building wealth for future investments and becoming knowledgable with sales transactions would be a good piece of that puzzle.

one thing I see is in these bigger cities in the mid west much of the urban core is more renter dominated than other urban cores.and landlords are doing a better job with their work so you don't see as many failed landlords or burnt out landlords as in the past. so that inventory is not hitting the market  Jay that is certainly the case for Milwaukee, landlords are more educated, probably also because of the good work people do on BP and locally, the Brew City - full credit to @Rebecca Knox What puzzles me is that I see the same hesitation in the wealthy suburbs, 350k and up.

I've heard there are some great ways to piece this puzzle together! 

Old tools you dont recognize are the most puzzling.

This is fundamentally incorrect.Rate is but a piece of the puzzle. 

The other way to "fix" it is to fill the hole with epoxy and reassemble the broken bits like a puzzle to try to disguise the damage as much as possible.  

Everything you do should be a piece to the puzzle that you want to complete 10,20,50 years down the road...That being said, I think house-hacking is the best strategy for a newbie... you will gain the acquisition experience you'll need for each transaction so that you know the ins and outs of how deals get done. 

I'm genuinely puzzled as to what the possible endgame could be...

The investor relations arm is the third piece of the puzzle, which is constantly raising capital and maintaining communications with investors.