If you enter a neighborhood and you immediately lock all doors from the inside, and check to make sure your gun is loaded, you are in class D no doubt.On the other hand, most class A+ neighborhoods as you drive through you cannot see the houses from the street. 

We plan to make money on the properties.

IF you want to get into real estate and potentially learn and make a few bucks on a property in Abilene let me know.

I have ideas of what I want to put in it, but want it to look legit and not something thrown together if that makes sense.Thank you in advance!

Realtors typically pre-screen rental clients to make sure their time is not going to be wasted.

I agree with Jonathan—being familiar with these markets will make investing in this area much easier. 

Quote from @Martin Jones: YouTube gurus will tell you to borrow money from someone else, but that's bad advice for a beginner.

They gave me decent terms on financing the rental and providing rehab funds but it did not make sense with me being so close to finished. 

A couple of months ago, I purchased a property using a hard money loan for $115,000.

Driving relevant traffic to both a website and socials is hard without throwing some money behind it.