You wire funds to a company that is in the business of building buildings, they create plans, get permits, raise additional capital, supervise construction, supervise filling the building with tenants, sell the building to an institutional investor, and if everything has gone to plan then there will be a significant profit and they wire you back more money than you put in.

It cost $25 to go from inactive to active status once you have an employing brokerage and upload your E&O insurance.

As a PM and a fiduciary to my clients I use a more complex software than most self managers use and also employ a live revenue manager to scan my local area. 

Additionally if you do not have experience doing short term it will take you time to get the experience and the ratings on the short term rental websites.Is there a way to estimate how much your renter is making from the short term rental on your property ?

These are professionals with additional training and a stricter code of ethics.

(Approach - 2) - He says that if he is asked to pull permits, he is not responsible for any additional work that the inspector may throw (basically more money out of my pocket on the rehab costs).

On an 8 plex, there isn't much meat on the bones for the amount of work needed for Management, but when you factor in an additional 24 units, that starts to benefit the PM, so there is more room to negotiate.Initially, the cost of PM outweighs your returns. 

Tenants are typically blue collar and many of them are recently employed by the recent boom in logistics and warehousing that is going on in the area (link below to a video I saw on Twitter that actually calls out Eastern PA warehousing as a desirable investment).There’s definitely a decent amount of investment going on and I’ve seen prices jump even in the past few years so competition is growing as people catch on.https://youtu.be/Yvi4MPHcwj0

The first quotation I received from my contractor is $90,000 ($273/sq ft), or $100,000 ($303/sq ft) if additional foundation work is required.

Look for places with population growth and employment boosts.