You get to learn a TON about how your business should work, and will avoid losing loads of cash to a management company—they may be convenient but the good ones aren't cheap.Plus, it's not too hard to find good software and tools to help you out with managing, if you want something more solid than an Excel sheet and a contact list.

Has anyone got any experience with Buildium or rentaloutions? Pro’s and Con’s any other suggestions? We are purchasing our first 5 SFR and would like to automate and keep this as easy as possible. Feel free to comment...

They do have some pretty good looking software and a good organization system.

Now I am a software developer looking to begin investing.

Imagine coming off a 12-14 hr night shift in the ICU and your tenant emails/texts complaining about a broken toilet paper holder...or how they locked themselves out of the house.I think the two greatest skillsets I could have benefitted from but never got around to are sales, and software/coding.

Creating written documentation on how to recreate this process (training manual).Side Note: This individual is familiar with clerical and accounting software type of work, but not necessarily property management. 

My income is $140k gross (software engineer), my wife currently stays at home with our child, but could go bring in $30k-$40k if needed.My question is if we put the $150k down (with $100k via a HELOC), rent out the back, and do some airbnb ($100-$150 in the area) with the extra rooms in the main house.   

@Joshua Marriott -  What we found is that any company or software that is selling lists tend to be outdated. 

It is important to be able to analyze the trailing 12 month financial statement of a property and take a deeper look at the loss to lease by examining the rent roll.Ideally, you are lucky enough to have an excel version of the rent roll provided to you by the broker or the owner you are interacting with on your potential acquisition (or.. if you or someone you know is developing a character recognition software that is able to read a PDF version of a rent roll and convert it to a nice, clean excel version please let me know!).

Many landlords are deciding to manage the property themselves with the help of different types of software out there.