It wasn’t ideal, but it was the only way to keep the deal alive.I made the drive to her small town, met her at a local bank, and had the paperwork notarized.

In my experience, there are a range of starting-off experiences, but one's experience is not always indicative of someone's desire/drive/commitment to pursue and thrive in real estate. 

If you haven't already, try going off market, driving around neighborhoods that would be of interest to you and finding ones that fall into your criteria (your agent should be able to help you as well).

You’ve got time, a clear goal, and the drive to make it happen.

Plenty of opportunity within driving distance. 

Quote from @Omar Samaniego: Quote from @Gannon Van Dyke: I started using RentRedi this year and found it super helpful after transitioning from spreadsheets and Google drive docs and using docusign for leasing re-ups.

It's a very lucrative business to start a website and drive traffic to then turn around and sell the leads to realtors or lenders.

Driving around the neighborhood over time, I saw the same van at a few other houses.

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. 

I'm struggling a little bit on deciding the best agreement to make sure I can get some cash flow, payback the HELOC, and not drive the new mortgage up too much with the Refi out of the HELOC.