If so, roughly what are you spending per sqft? 

City proper has been on 5 year bear market completely unrelated to anything political, the suburbs have been adding inventory since the summer but are still very low but any measure and have actually gotten tighter the last few month, while I am open to the idea these cuts could eventually have some effect on the market, about 20% of the dc area is federal employees, let’s say the federal government cut the work force 25% which would be huge, that’s 5% of the population, but a good number of those people are either two income households where one person works in the private and/or the person being laid can go get a similar job in the provide sector l, the percentage of households who would be forced to sell thier house over this is likely in very low single digits.

I purchased a rental unit and did some private funding in 2016, and I will probably expand this business by doing more deals.

I would say NO, do not spend your money or your parent's money on any real estate training.

This means taking days off of work to handle business, dealing with the subs and any deficiencies they may have, spending time dealing with the city, for both permits and inspections.Having GC doing everything won't entirely eliminate your time cost, but it can mitigate it to an extreme degree.My take is that if you are confident that you can be as fast as the GC in handling everything and there is no negative impact to your other business then by all means do it.

You spend a lot of time and money having people do this work, and at the end of the day you don't net any more income compared to a long term rental.

I'd spend the money on vinyl.

You go out and buy an apartment house and then hire a property manager so you don't have to personally spend time on the property.

A GC makes money based on what you spend. 

My Name is Miles, currently living in Arlington (DFW Area), I've always had intentions of at some point getting into real estate, now at 40, and finally at a place financially that it is feasible, I'm planning on spending the next 6-8 months learning all I can (and then rest of my life continuing learning lol) before taking the FIRST plunge.