First few months should be focused on educating yourself on your local market, setting up a marketing budget, creating business cards, website, marketing materials to hand out etc etc etc.....you should expect the first few months to be difficult until your able to get a constant lead flow. 

People do it constantly and decide to just live in those properties and raise families.You already have them beat by deciding to buy something you will rent out for financial gain.

I'm late 30's, and constantly being pulled away from my family.

I also have a lawyer as an advisor that I may occasionally sit down with and pay $100 consults from time to time to ask legal questions the first meeting with this individual  is this coming Monday.Currently, I feel the situation is much better  with the tenants the  situation  that is going in  is crappy for both of us with water coming into the house but I am constantly working on remediation of the situation.

We constantly hear from our tenants how they've never had better landlords.

Real estate is a rollercoaster of a ride and if you're in it long enough, you will see it all.If you diversify your revenue stream with 5 properties making up your ROI as opposed to just in one, now all of a sudden "that one" vacant property has a far less significance on your bottomline.I always tell me investors that the party starts after property #7 as that is when you start replacing the national income average through cashflow generated by your portfolio.Why cash only? 

RE you have to work to hire people and address issues or constantly work to continually create income.

I decided to work with different housing programs to have a dependable stream of income.

If you can't handle stepping in to a grocery store or attending Sunday church service without a dog in your pack, you may need to be medicated and under constant supervision.I'm prior military and a combat veteran.

Also, there are so many perks to being a pro member, and new perks are constantly being added.