@Raymond Hunce you may wish to consider Damascus Community bank the closest branch to Harford & Baltimore counties is in Carrol County Md. 201 East Ridgeville Blvd. 

I use Home Depot as they are closest to me and I found the following link to be extremely helpful in determining the "bang for the buck" in the different types of paint.

The closest thread I could find that discussed a topic similar to this is: I have been reading a lot in the discussions about property management platforms and for accounting, for example, this thread: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/206...In other threads I have seen Buildium receive good feedback and in the thread mentioned above Quickbooks seemed to be used by a lot of investors for accounting.  

Closest thing I've found is an insurance company that will write me a policy but exclude the dog.

Everyone single person who discourages you from getting in real estate either doesn't have the courage to do it themselves or they have a random great uncle or third cousin who bought a house in a low income area and surprisingly the tenant tore the house up and didn't pay etc...You truly are the average or reflection of the five closest people around you.

They either don't or can't talk to the people that they're closest with about what they do.Almost like soldiers stepping out of line, reminds me of that Pink Floyd song/music video We Don't Need No Education.Thanks again! 

The closest thing would be buying a stabilized property or buying a brand new apartment building with great management.To address your question, if done properly, value-add usually will produce a better return, but also offers up more risk.

A degree isn’t necessary for building a business in real estate....neither is one for being s realtor......the closest functional degree is economics but even that is fluff(minored in economics) most of what is in these college degree programs is all theory. 

Or your purchase is the closest comp and true value won't be reflected.  

It's the closest thing to investing magic there is.Pardon me if you are already aware of this but as an example if you buy a hammer you get to right off the cost of that hammer.