Not only can you collect rent to go towards your mortgage, you're also building equity that can potentially be used down the road for your next home or investment.

In the future I will likely use a combination of a leasing agent for doing showings and a virtual assistant for handling leases, marketing, recording rents and calling for collections.

Did you join Capital Collective or Raise Masters?  

After we drafted a bare-bones plan that considered their timeline, target rents, and capital reserves, they honed in on a medium-sized complex managed by a local group.. from what I’ve heard, these guys had impressed other out-of-state buyers before and delivered on their promises.

If I reach out to a realtor, will they expect me to pay them to collect comps for me? 

It markets our properties, screens our tenants, collects our rent, deposits it into our bank accounts, has full accounting and reporting features, has a tenant facing web portal & app where tenants can log in and report maintenance issues and see their account, etc, for $2/door/month - but they have a $45 minimum monthly fee... so up until you cross 22 doors it would be $45.

At 23, your unfair advantage is time that is not constrained by collecting commitments of a family.

Also, focus on 2 years of job/income stability.Class D Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, all cashflow with little, maybe even negative, relative rent & value appreciationVacancy Est: 20%+ should be used to cover nonpayment, evictions & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores under 560 (almost 30% probability of default), little to no good tradelines, lots of collections & chargeoffs, recent evictions.

It's impressive that you were able to figure that out. 

I have 2 sets of tenants that I have had considerable problems with collecting the rent over the past year.