If you bot H1 22, it's more luck than skill.

If you got your credit decent you can start soft shopping for conventional/fha home loans if you didnt do so well improving  your credit this is where you start looking for private  lenders, partners and investors.

I've got a couple of soft factor questions I'm not sure how to analyze and would love to speak to a few of you more experienced types!

My advice to anyone with a job, is keep your job, but learn the skills of real estate investing.

I've done some expensive real estate investment training programs in the 1990's and early 2000's that a lot of people complained about, (or even asked for refunds on) yet each time I did these trainings, I learned new skills and strategies that helped me grow my real estate investment business.  

Toilet is held by 2 bolts and nuts and any skilled person can replace it in 10 minutes unless it has cast iron waste line or an uneven floor.

On that scale we have a range of properties in our portfolio, even though I have started to trade out properties from the lower end back in 2014/2015, and some cashflow a little better - however, when you look at the total financial picture there is a lot more than cash flow: obviously appreciation, but also principal pay down, turn over rate and soft factors like tenant quality and with that turnover cost.RE's primary superpower is equity, cash flow is secondary.

.- Converted to a rental in 2024; initially rented for $4,750/month, but tenants moved out, and the soft Bay Area rental market has made filling it challenging.

If you have some house skills, that helps, but when you go out looking for partners it usually means money and people don't want to get that vibe in their first conversation.

The point is that the hardest skill to learn is marketing for deals.