A wealth of information without spending a lot of money.

Would you want to spend the time on it to renovate? 

However, it's been six months since we hired a property management company, and the property is still not rent-ready.Now, the management company is telling us that we need to spend $8,000 to get the property rent-ready after a pagedale occupancy inspection.

If you're spending your time counting trivialities like this you are "tripping over dollars to pick up pennies".

Stop hanging out with your deadbeat buddies who spend all day drinking, talking sports, and otherwise wasting away.

Also, eventually, the renovations are out of date or worn and you need to do another cap ex spend. 

There is strong evidence of slowed consumer spending.

It would be out of state for me but my job is very flexible and I would be able to spend some time in Knoxville if needed.

I see this constantly out in the market place those who want to jump in the RE world that have limited to no resources and they are far to worried about what the equity or money partner is going to make.. or they spend months trolling the internet trying to find that private investor who is happy with 8% or 10% which they never find and they just lose the dream   ... if there is not enough money in a deal to split profit or be able to comfortably pay HML  then the deal is too skinny to start with..

Don't spend a lot of time in Facebook investing groups.