While the taxes on the listing may seem reasonable if it turns out they’re 300% more than they were two years ago just because the community has increased its spending this is a trend that will quickly make your cash flow evaporate.

If you had also spend money on renovations and improvements while occupying those should have gone into service then as well. 

If you are able to manage it yourself, I think you will get a lot of very helpful education in real estate by spending a least a year or two doing that.You'll be able to work with property managers a lot better if you've done the work yourself for a bit, and it also helps to get familiar with the various laws and regulations you have to comply with as the owner, even if you do have a property manager in place (e.g., the new RI rental registry and associated lead paint inspections/certificates).It's up to you whether you're able to do it, but I think you'll get a lot out of the experience if you can try it for a year or two.

The number one mistake that I saw buyers making was jumping right into negotiating (and not very good negotiating at that) without first spending the time to build rapport.

We've been reading everything we can get our hands on, listening to podcasts, and spending time every morning reading and learning from the forums here at BP. 

Now I'm banned for spamming and while I'd like to handle this privately I'm blocked from the messaging system. 

Now we are mostly scaling our business with larger communities but I've used many different creative finance strategies including seller finance, private lending, hard-money, collateral from other properties, and lease-options. 

Building a real estate portfolio might be attractive, but if you're crunched for time, perhaps you could do private lending in a SDIRA or get into syndications.

We plan to spend the next 6-12 months continuing to earn and save, as well as nail down a final market we want to househack in.

I'd consider real estate debt funds and private lending but that's not on my immediate radar right now.