You’ll likely need to look beyond the city limits (in areas that are still close enough to the city to benefit from its local economic tailwinds) if you want to find deals that pencil out.

@Lillian Pintaro,Birmingham’s a lucrative market—it’s been my stomping ground for nearly 20 years, and you can find some excellent deals if you know what you’re after and dive deep by zip code, neighborhood, and city block.For what it’s worth, we manage 2,000+ units (many for out-of-state investors) mostly in the north and west part of town—so think suburbs outside the city limits like Graysville (35073), Adamsville (35005), Mount Olive (35117), Center Point (35215), and the like.Since you’re also open to the surrounding areas, places like Odenville (to the east) and Tuscaloosa (to the southwest) could be worth checking out.

Explore the possibility of doing liability insurance instead, if you don't have much equity it may be your best, and much cheaper option.  

I started off with the standard turbo tax for 1099s and it felt limited.

Phoenix is the fastest growing metro in AZ.The campaign is generating leads, however with my minimal real estate investing experience and limited time from my full time job I feel like I'm not maximizing my opportunity here.The way I see it is I have 2 paths:1.

Second, in terms of asset protection, LLCs are not invincible, but I think what many don’t understand is that they are not designed to completely shield your assets from liabilities, on the contrary they are designed to contain and isolate liabilities.

Congratulations @David Shaun - those are awesome numbers, and should hold up with the low liabilities, regardless of market. 

Generally yes a HELOC will go off your personal finances so qualifying is generally based on your income, liabilities, and credit. 

I am okay with limited cashflow while I'm in my prime W2 working years but not negative. 

Now there are tertiary markets in the US that will be low value assets but not super high risk those are your smaller towns but your upside is severely limited.