If not, understand the risk of taking equity to generate more equity based off your ROI.

I can envision that the numbers on these luxury homes would lead to to a long lag time...but hopefully I'm wrong. 

I just reveled at a companys lead strategy that lead from the website directly to whatsapp.

Based on my experience of running properties, even if the build were to cost you as much as $600k but you could generate $125k/year, you'd be very happy with that investment. 

There will also be many homeowners who have had the properties in the family through generations and own free and clear but now still need to obtain a construction loan to rebuild. 

Ahshar Sylvestre Code violations are a great source of lead generation.

Being able to shuffle leads from MTR to MTR is a huge bonus and you can benefit from the economies of scale faster. 

I am 20 years old and trying to learn as much as i can about real estate so that when i graduate college and have a steady income Ill be able to make smart investments hopefully leading to financial freedom.

If that leads to a more structured and education based meeting, then that is great - if it remains just a place to gather and bounce ideas and network, that's great too.

My team lead is a mentor of mine so to speak but in general, the people i have met through REI meet ups have considerably changed my trajectory and are real world, local examples that have helped me along the way and for free.