If you are already planning to buy out-of-state and use property management, you are leaving money on the table and may want to look into more passive strategies since you don't seem to want to do management and you will still need to manage the manager.2.

Don't leave money sitting on an exchange. 

Leave some on the bone for the end buyer.

I would have been leaving money on the table.

Just focusing on the passive income you want to achieve will leave you chasing cash flow which will have you buying properties in worse areas with harder tenancies that seem to cash flow better, but will have large cap ex.Any time someone asks a question about where to invest and it can be anywhere, they aren't ready to invest and are opening themselves up to every pitch in the world on an area.

Also, based on the scope you shared  it's a heavy lift to complete the work description for $45K while leaving any profit for the contractor.

I had tenants that stopped paying rent for 2 years in NY during the pandemic and we couldn't kick them out, i've had tenants move out and leave someone squatting and NY made it impossible to evict them so I had to pay them off, i've had tenants destroy their apartments before they moved out (maggots in the fridge, flushing their kids toys down the toilet etc) so i've dealt with real difficulty.

My mortgage will be $2,005/month, and I’m budgeting up to $600/month for utilities, leaving a potential monthly cash flow of $995.I also set up an LLC and a business account to track rental income and expenses.Questions:Do you have any advice for me as a young real estate investor?

The way it was explained to me was that I had to give them 60 days notice to leave the property.

This leaves a $172K gap.