Not stuff it all in a time capsule of a 401k and then, when I’m weak old and institutionalized, start asking “so how do I actually create some income with my money?!”

if a realtor in our market is a true slim ball an doing illegal things they will be kicked out of the industry by the state.. every month in our bulletin you see those with revoked licenses.. so to that extent agents are held accountable.. 

I started looking around with a 5% DP in mind, but like you said, everything seemed to have pretty slim margins and didn’t cash flow well.

Since the market is so hot and the inventory so low, from what I've heard so far it's pretty slim pickins'

There are some properties in Hattiesburg for that but inventory is a bit slim.

Seems I am late to the party for anything of better quality as returns are slim to none now.

More often, they do not take care of properties as you would.The returns for quality real estate is actually pretty slim. 

We have seen investors purchase distressed properties at ridiculous prices and as flippers ourselves(50+) over the last decade our profit margins are slimming and risk is increasing due to higher acquisition prices.Depending on your budget and risk tolerance you can look into:Distressed B/C grade condos in Tamiami/Kendall area.

After digging into it for some time, I think it's safe to say that the choices are slim to none - there are some relatively cheap (sometimes free) data sources that are very poor quality, and the good quality data is prohibitively expensive (House Canary charges $1 per API call - WOW). 

I plan on having tenants pay for water but can agree the cashflow is slim for now.