That continuous flow of new nice properties wouldn't hurt your valuation, since they can go into something brand new instead of something that is 3 years old?

Insignia is a Best Buy brand made by Hisnese.Check out their reviews online and see how people rate these.

(If curious, my residential real estate investor clients from 10 years ago [you can find my 10 year old bigger pockets dot com posts :], at the time buying up 2-4 unit properties, a lot of them are now done with the 'human' tenants and want to 1031 into something that is ACTUALLY passive, so yes Starbucks comes up, thus I watch it).In my case I zoomed all the way into a specific brand (which then allows me to make very sweeping generalizations across an entire state -- but still not the entire country), I'm not suggesting you do that, but SOME of the variables need to be narrowed down, before you can gain any useful insights. 

In fact, we even replaced her brand new heater.

. $250,000 for 1,600SF isn't outrageous, but you could probably do it for cheaper.If I were building a brand new home, I probably would skip a basement.

. $150 labor and $100 for a brand new toilet all day long. 

Yes national brands manage it, but they typically charge 6% not 0.6% lol.

I am wondering if my first steps (past the education part) is to build a network of people who know, like, and trust me through posting content like newsletters, articles, podcasts, doing webinars, going to events (aka build my brand), or, should I first find a deal and then raise capital?

I'm in Austin and there is a online mattress showroom that I visited to try out different brands. 

These markets will offer you distressed properties starting at 60kish or so and up to 150kish.For example, let me make up a hypothetical deal.You buy a house for 90k and am putting 60k in to add. half bath, redo the kitchen and bathroom, brand new paint and new LVP flooring all throughout.