And I am not one of those guys, I don't bank on building a portfolio and stream of slow income (btw, I also wouldn't call it passive income unless your cash flow is such that you can hire a full time property manager on fixed salary to take care of everything for you), that route is not for me to take.

Take the Picassa route.

I went the VA loan route myself, and the ability to house hack while building wealth was a game changer.

I was strongly considering joining before I read this, now I am going to go the hard route, but probably best to just stay active on here and go the extra effort to network with accomplished developers in my area.

While I’m still in the early stages, I’m incredibly motivated to learn, grow, and surround myself with like-minded individuals who can help guide me along the way.What drew me to real estate is that I saw it as the best route for me and family to have financial freedom.

I had a feeling that starting with smaller deals might be the more practical route for long-term success, but I didn’t want to sell myself short by not aiming big.

During that time I've often described the multifamily market as a traffic collision at a 4-way intersection where you had (lack of or negative) rent growth coming from one direction, and from the other directions: cap rates, expenses, and interest rates. 

If you are just looking to network I would go the route of meetups locally (you can check above at the toolbar, hoover over forums then to the right you have events and meetups.If you are looking to wholesale and build a list of buyers that fix and flip for deals you may have then I would pull lists from 3rd party sites like Property Radar or propstream.

Use a spreadsheet instead, or find a different software.Thanks Tim.I'll probably go the spreadsheet route to start with, but as I look to scale my properties continue to evaluate other tech.I also reached out to RentRedi @ Tyson in this thread to share my experiences. 

It seems like I need to check further away from the DMV area.My feelings are if you want “cash flow” you should buy a bond (I really like the tips rate right now) there is next to no reason to buy real estate for cash flow, if you are going to buy you should buy with appreciation in mind, which is not to say that’s the route I’d go, I’ve been liquidating properties to put in stocks and money market funds over the last few years and u just did the math and I’ve come out well ahead, but just to say there are arguments for stocks/bonds, there are arguments for levered appreciation, but the cap rates pretty much anywhere aren’t worth it vs an inflation protected bond, especially since a 3/rd of inflation is real estate anywhere, you could get “cash flow” and inflation protection much easier through a tips.