From my experience working with over 400 investors, I’d recommend starting with house hacking—ideally a fourplex if you find a good deal, but a duplex works too.

Going live as a STR in 2 weeks Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Here's a list of things to track:- Formal lease application- Formal signed and executed lease specific to your state- Payment history (I recommend using online rent collection like Apartments.com, RentRedi, etc)- Maintenance requests and receipts- Accounting for all rental-related expenses (repairs, utilities, etc) The more you treat it like a business, the more helpful you are to your CPA come tax time. 

I definitely don't recommend renting to a friend.

I can recommend property management, realtor, vendors, if you need them.

Once you sign up there’s a ton of other systems (Freedomsoft, Prycd, Mailers, LLC, phone lines etc)he recommends that you get in order to do his program successfully.

I highly recommend the book real estate by the numbers.

Highly recommended.

My recommendation would be to take business classes at a technical college while working/ interning for a company in a field you are interested in.