Lead Shirpa is a great skip tracing service Yes you can target motivated sellers.We just made 43k from a Post card inquiry.

Read what they are posting to sort out who is experienced and who is not.Podcasts.

For the security deposit, let them sort that out.

This is too important and also sort of a personal question depending on your state and specific circumstance and I suspect not a one size fits all answer would suffice. 

Sounds like you have your act together with passive income and a savings, as well as motivation to build wealth from there.

I know that in the future we will have some sort of market downturns and you could lose all that you acquired with properties that target low paid workers.Behavioral issues are a significant concern.

You might study up on this Atlanta business that is growing their business with private offerings (funding)   padsplit.comThey have a shades of gray solutoin for the unrelated adults, and rooming house zoning that is sort of working in the Atlanta area.   

You could try reaching out to ask questions and maybe that would turn into a sort of mentorship type relationship if adding a partner is not on the table. 

Hence why WB said index fund, sure if ya got a few hundred mill - billion+ yeah, could you imagine trying to sort out deploying a billion dollars into real estate, yikes, what a headache. 

I think this is the first step so they can know who has the lead pipes before they pass a local ordinance to require the replacement at the property owner's expense.It's a "first registration, then confiscation", of sorts.