Make sure you budget for the negative year.

To start your journey, I recommend focusing on building your network by joining meetups and engaging in online forums, while narrowing down your first investment based on your budget, market, and goals.

Where you pick will depend on your goals for cash flow and your budget to buy.

From there determining what you have budgeted for your first project.

New agents may struggle with periods of no income while waiting for deals to close.Solution: Budget wisely, build a financial cushion, and prepare for slow months.

You definitely need to have your ducks in a row using a HML to get the project done quickly, on schedule and on budget.

Based on the information you've provided it seems like you might be targeting the wrong type of deal flow for your budget/risk-tolerance/area.

Your investor agent should be walking properties for you and providing an in-depth breakdown on the location, scope of work, renovation budgets, etc.

In PA you can build an entire 2000sqft home for that budget, and PA is not cheap. 

I say we dump the deal but the other 2 partners want go ahead with it even though the lender has now cut our SOW budget from $65,000 to $40,000.