New York is hard to evict people and you'll end up spending more time and money doing it yourself.

He has been saving his money for years and has plenty of money saved but no experience with real estate investing.

I don’t want the property to appraise low and not have enough money to get when I cash out.

I never even would've thought of that.I think you need help with just money management. 

My conversion rate was higher because they kind of look like a wedding invite.In regard to lenders, join meetups and local facebook groups and ask for referrals.I’m doing larger commercial deals now and found I wasted a Ton of money on direct mail.

You could also try looking up money judgements filed against local businesses at the magistrate level and target them with direct mail or driving for dollars. 

Quote from @Michael Challenger: I would connect with local people at meetups, that might give you some contacts for private money.

You can try to pursue them for a money judgment, but how will you collect?

If you make good money doing that, do it again a year or two later. 

The great thing about living in a high cost of living area is that your salary / wages are hopefully also very high.If you are a new college grad, I would focus the next 1-3 years on increasing your salary as much as possible(gain new skills, new certifications, change employers, etc).Once you make more money, you can easily get in a position to buy a property on a more frequent basis.Best of luck!