Explore off-market deals where competition might be less intense.Don’t get discouraged—success in these markets often comes from building strong connections and thinking creatively about deal sourcing!

You can write the best guide but people want information for credible sources so you might want to clarify all of that or it might be an obstacle all along.3.

There are opinions on these forums and people have a right to them and people may take it as criticism. real estate is not a business where everyone is friendly and just as you have shown from whoever was trying to scam you and has nothing to do with doing your best, its about being educated before moving forward. 

@Ike Okwerekwu Recommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.

Another nice bonus of using this as a funding source is no closing costs, big help on the front end.Obviously, if all goes relatively well, the plan would be to hold these properties as rentals and refi at some point down the road when rates on mortgages drops back down a bit, whenever that may be.

The #1 reason why landlords fail is this:  Failure to manage to the lease (Source: American Apartment Owners' Assn). 

I recommend researching the average appreciation over the past 10 years in your target area to get a clearer picture.As you know, in real estate, ROI comes from multiple sources: Home Appreciation:  Reno Appreciation: Value added through renovations or improvements (usually just in the first year).

A PMC is great to use not only for all these items but also really being a trusted source for vendors too etc. 

It's worth $149 (prices went up) for a year to see if it will be a good tenant source.

My reports don’t always ‘kill the deal,’ but they do shine a light on critical information investors may not be getting from their team.