Paid platforms often offer additional features like market analytics, off-market property leads, and filters for investor-specific criteria, giving them a leg up over free options.Exactly, most platforms have to offset cost somewhere because of how expensive it is to keep the data up to date.

Whether he has paid rent is immaterial. 

Its dashboard is so cluttered, it hard to see who has paid and who hasn't.

I am expecting to do 3-4 deals per year until I get to 20 properties or so and then snowball the debt so they are all paid off by retirement. 

They'd be much better off being a Hard Money Lender and make 5 times that (and every repair to their "investment house" is paid by them...So, if you put $10k down on a property and make $150/month net cash flow your Coc Return (annualized) is 18% which is Very Good.If you followed that and understand it then keep looking for a deal.

For example, $50,000 loan at 10% paid out evenly over 10 years.Like I said, super new to this part of the business, so trying to wrap my head (and spreadsheets) around it.

Even if you get something in escrow right away, it's still a 30-45 day escrow period before you would get paid, unless you are working with cash Buyers.  

Having a mentor was part of the $35k we paid.

The property was rented and generated $160 cash flow after mortgage, taxes, insurance and property management fees were paid.

An update one year later after this post, I now have:- Got my property and casualty license and wrote 370+ policies in a year- Saved up a few more thousand dollars in investable cash, paid off $20K in debt and raised my credit score by 100 points- Launched a direct to seller cold email marketing campaign and generated leads for cheap- Got connected with a few real estate investing communities like Subtle Asian Real Estate and Pace Morby's SubTo- Aggressively read and studied as much as I can get my hands onThat being said, I decided to run a marketing campaign to generate distressed seller leads in Phoenix, Arizona, mostly because:1.