The learning curve thus far has been pretty intense and it seems like there is always an infinite more amount of knowledge to gain in the real estate business. 

And those are few and far between.A PM company already has a tested group of subs and should have the capacity to manage intensive turnovers.  

I just look at what the final cost of a property will be, how maintenance-intensive it will be, and what kind of rent I can expect to see.

Experience not always a must.Conventional or bank financing is pretty straight forward but capital intensive if you look to grow your portfolio quickly.

reality   reality check.. you want to flip 40 homes in a yearlets say your in a low value market were you can buy for 100k put in 25 to 50k per projectlender will want some equity.. as your not provenso how are you going to do that when sales cycles are 6 to 9 months from start to finish.. some get lucky and can flip in 120 to 150 but what I see is 6 to 9 months.so your starting out.. you would need to buy about 30 homes right off the bat  so that's 3 to 4.5 million.. 20% equity you need 600 to 900k in cash.. and you need another couple hundred grand in operating capital you have to make debt service while you hold these for nine months. so lets say 10% interest to make It easy on 3 mil is about 25k a month.. so that's another 200k for debt service. so this is why not MANY can do 40 flips in a year its so capital intensive.. and you certainly can't start out that way you need to prime the pump and maybe in 3 to 5 years you get there.

Good, because there are a lot of areas for information, and clearly there is a demand for it...bad, there is so much competition so if you are not one to get emotional about things, and you stick to your numbers (which is what you should be doing), it may take a bit of time to get in because the some of the competition is happy making little, to sometimes even having a loss on a property...so the bidding here is intense.  

The more time-sensitive and transaction intensive an investment is, the less practical this can be.The alternative is to establish a plan that provides you with checkbook control.  

Prices still seem high and competition is intense (went to an open house for a multi family property on Sunday that was a madhouse).Curious if anyone else has noticed the same.

It's a cash intensive business and you need the resources to deal with issues: evictions, maintenance, capital expenditures, etc. 

Is there an amenity you could provide to the tenants like picnic area or basketball hopes and playground?