Given your residency limits, the high prices in NYC and surrounding areas are a challenge, but there are still options in neighborhoods further out within your allowed range, like parts of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

We paid ours off when our balance was $125k, but on a 15 so payments were fairly high at $1732 PI.

For instance, someone making $500k a year and living in a very highly appreciating market might be extremely happy on a deal that loses $200 a month but is getting 5% appreciation on a 2 million dollar property in San Diego, butut that doesn't make sense for the investor with 30k and a lower paying job.When it comes to the book series I agree with you that the order doesn't make sense (having read both).

Adjusting for it allowed him to realize his property’s ROI was still positive but not as high as initially hoped.

I've been watching Chad Carson's videos and his approach of accumulating more properties than you need, then start using that income to pay off mortgages and cull the lower performing properties makes sense to me. 

Purchasing a new primary and turning my current house into a rental and looking to hire a PM but some of the fee's seem high. 1 quote - 100% 1st/month rent if i self-manager, or 75% 1st/mo rent and 10%/mo for PM to manage.Again, im new to this but from reading and talking to people there is a typical finders fee ~1000$ and 10%/mo rent if the PM manages. 

We respond to inquiries, but if someone did the things you suggested to try to track me down instead of following the advertised protocol I would disqualify you as crazy or a potential stalker or just high needs or high maintenance. 

Mortgage lending is highly competitive, and there are many newbie loan officers that will bend over backwards to get you to pull a credit report and pay for an appraisal.

Doing that using the BRRRR strategy right now is highly unlikely.

High risk since most fail, but big rewards.