The property manager we work with offers reasonable rates for this service and will take care of inventory management, leasing, maintenance, and overall property management.Always buy a property that would also be a good long-term rental.

Investment Info:Condo buy & hold investment.First primary residence (2 bed/ 2 bath condo) located into a desirable part of Southern California.

BiggerPockets also has a calculator to analyze deals, and I highly recommend you start this as soon as possible, even if you are not ready to buy.

Instead of buying existing properties and rehabbing them, the idea is to partner with a builder who constructs new rental properties, then refinance and rent them out. 

I would suggest you do both of what you suggest - meaning get either a new mortgage (more conservative route) or HELOC on the townhome and use those funds to buy your next investment property.

Then, if you can trend over time you'll want to see where the "path of progress" is going/moving and attempt to buy in that path of progress to gain some appreciation in the future.

The current average rent on the new buy is $925.

We also have many unique buyer incentives where an investor can get up to a 10% price reduction to come into immediate equity, or get that 10% as a cash back at closing to reduce your down payment and increase your ROI, or buy rates down into the low 4s on 30yr loans to maximize cash flow.

The way wholesalers get around this is by claiming to simply be marketing the contract and not the property itself (hard to do legally), or by doing a double close (buying the property then reselling it immediately).

Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?