We recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

Look at the cost of the penalty and the overall cost of the refi and compare it to what you'd save/the extra cash flow with a lower rate and see what pencils out better.

well when you compare to what 90% of investors at least on this site do is buy rental houses or apartments..

Economists note that job growth in typically underreported industries fell by 42,000 compared to the 6-month average, suggesting August’s numbers may understate actual gains.Key Employment GainsConstruction: +34,000 jobs, driven by heavy civil engineering and nonresidential trade contractors.Healthcare: +31,000 jobs, though slower than the past year's monthly average of 60,000.Social Assistance: +13,000 jobs, with more modest growth compared to previous months.Other growing sectors include financial activities, wholesale trade, and government (+24,000 jobs).Job Losses and Sector StrugglesManufacturing: -24,000 jobs.Retail: -11,100 jobs.Temporary help employment continues to shrink, reflecting business uncertainty.Wage and Fed Policy ImplicationsWages rose by 0.4% in August, up 3.8% year-over-year, supporting a cautious approach by the Federal Reserve on deeper rate cuts.

You can compare it to someone you met having $1M and thinking they must be doing something right, but was originally given $10M. 

You'll benefit greater from the appreciation and loan paydown in the long term and in the short term it's not much more to manage a duplex/triplex compared to a single family if you're managing yourself.In the end, I would give yourself a few months to talk and deliberate, but the best way to get going is to start looking in an area and look at 100 deals in that area.

So far they have been incredibly inspiring and informative (if not at times a little depressing, due to the example prices being so ridiculously low compared to the actual prices in my area!

How does their track record compare to their past forecasts.I highly suggest the book by @Brian Burke On passive investing 'The Hands Off investor"

It has a low barrier of entry compared to inside the city and is quite proximal to intel and Google data centers on the Northeast side of Columbus. 

I'm also looking to build a reliable team, including an agent or property manager, to assist with this long-term investment.If you have any recommendations for the area, I'd love to hear them.