It keeps things professional while giving you room to grow your expertise.I admire your perspective on keeping your parents’ resources separate from your own—it’s smart to want to succeed on your own terms.

to your point, if you save up so that you're in a strong financial position, house hack a solid duplex in a decent neighborhood, make smart decisions, and hold it indefinitely, you'll be fine.conversely, if you have $0 and somehow start out with a risky flip, or borrow $20K and spend it all on a magic mentoring program, or buy a terrible property in a neighborhood you've never been to, you may not be fine.

Hitting local meetups is smart—Tampa has a great investor community where you can connect with wholesalers and lenders.

We hope to get into real estate investing by flipping homes, but we also understand it’s smart to diversify a little and have some longer term goals like rental properties.

It might seem like a kindness to provide a printer to a traveling professional, but until they invent one that works on every device, every time; that doesn't need paper at two in the morning; and has cheap toner that refills itself, we will pass on that amenity.I am sure there are other examples for all 4 quadrants, but like @Allen Duan wrote the important thing is to look at amentities through the lens of the end user (with an eye towards the "competition").

Partnerships and smart financing made this deal a win!

With enough knowledge you can make a educated decision on which approach you take.My experience:I personally don't sign up for any program who take you aside during events and try to sell packages that is just blatant sales strategy.Once you sign up there is every attempt to make you sign for their programs for bookkeeping, registered agent, LLC or corp setup fee which have ridiculous even with platinum membership.Basic standard structure they suggest to take advantage of multiple deductions can be easily achieved by proper education or work with a good firm like https://wcginc.com  who is local to you.A umbrella C-crop to manage all other LLC properties and take advantage of many tax deductions that are not available with a llc, its also used to take losses up to 100K as startup expenses and dissolve the entity after few years.Few LLC entities for investing in Real Estate, etc preferably in Wyoming or Nevada ( you can find many companies online who can do this for $150 compared to anderson $1500-$3000) , they will claim they have a secret Operating agreement which is bogus.They certainly try to take advantage of tax loopholes and claim to be smart people, my view they are just taking advantage of numbers as per their own statements.

The real issue is that they didn’t have a plan to monitor usage or set up protections to minimize costs during the eviction process.Ideally, the PM could’ve done things like:Limit access to unnecessary areas to reduce power use.Install smart thermostats to keep heat at a safe minimum.Request a utility cap in court during eviction proceedings (if allowed in your area).Bottom line: It’s less about the utility switch itself and more about proactively managing costs once the tenant overstayed.bro what? 

I would also try to minimize expenses through decreasing cleaning costs, installing smart tech like a thermostat to control utility costs, etc.5.

And, depending on where your properties are in Portland, the value might be near its peak—selling while they’re in top condition could be a smart move.Ultimately, it comes down to what will give you the most peace of mind and the most flexibility for the future.