So most agents are only putting about half of that $12k in their pocket, and out of that $6k they have to cover all of their operating expenses: licensing fees, MLS/ Realtor Association fees, continuing education classes to stay compliant with licensing requirements, monthly "desk" fees/ technology fees to their brokerage, health insurance for themselves and their family, errors and omissions insurance (required), marketing, car, car insurance, gas, clothes, computer/ software, cell phone, closing gifts, signs, photography, staging if they offer that, etc.

Quote from @Fakaradin Floyd: Hey everyone, I'm a 24 year old Software engineer that's always wanted to get into real estate, I graduated college about a year and a half ago and wanted to hit the ground running when graduated.

As for property management software, options like Hostaway or Lodgify can streamline bookings and communication.

Hi BiggerPockets community,We are a married couple based in the California Bay Area, both working as software engineers with a combined income of close to a Million USD.

Quote from @Grant Francke: For those with using Buildium for property management software, do you use Buildium's public site or do you use a website you have made and maintain?

What do people use for crime data . Use to be on Zillow but because they are woke ...no longer . Very important to me especially investing out of state 

In all my years of Property Management in one of the most tenant friendly Cities in the World, I bet there will be a lot of interested people, regardless if they are actually planning on buying in a tenant friendly City.My management style would be considered highly unusual as I approach these issues so that it becomes a win-win situation and take into account the human element of the tenant.There is potential for me to add more to that Podcast to include how the Portfolio did over the 28 years growth period (1998 to 2025) with real numbers.There will be things like making the Portfolio safer as I age by paying off the Mortgages and increasing cash flow, etc.I'm also a Cloud Software developer (Salesforce specifically) and will be employing a lot of A.I. in 2025.The RE Portfolio is cash flowing very well and I can afford to integrate experimental A.I. to test it out.Things like A.I.

Seems they will have process, and software system to help and teach.

For example my cousin bought a place in Palo Alto near Sergey Brin’s house and has made more on it than he does with his very high-paying tech software job. 

You must use a PMS and for the software to work you'll need to own the listings, which means you'll need to also collect all the funds, so owners' rents don't get deposited in the wrong account (Yes, Airbnb makes that mistake all the time!!).