I mentioned being a contractor because as I understand it, it's difficult to procure traditional financing when you file taxes using 1099's.

Phone calls, desk fees, monthly charges, copier fees, admin assistant fees, how much time do you need to sit in a room and make cold calls, etc.If you want to be an investor with a license... that is a totally different mind set.Here, all of us are investors... when we procure a deal for ourselves, we take title in an entity.

I would also like to add the suggestion of perhaps initially procuring (3) rentals instead of (5), and using your remaining capital for flips to strengthen your cash position.  

I had a 5 mil unsecured LOC.. from my bank to buy and a 8 mil secured so when we got the trustee's deed we secured it up with our secured LOC.. its the ultimate BRRR... but I can tell you 5 mil check book is a nice thing.But its small potato's compared to many of the CA bigger players .. it enabled us to be top 3 in PDX though for the 5 years I did this.

Looking for a mentor in my area of SE FL to learn about procuring foreclosure deals. 

@Megan HodgesYou could start procuring leads as a wholesaler and build up some money that way.

If you have that situation then you could be facing procuring cause issues and bad blood/bad feelings.If you have 2-3 agents who have automatic emails going to you every day out of the MLS and you're seeing the same properties in all of the emails, you have a real issue on your hand and you need to resolve that quick.

Help can be a loose concept and is predicated on "procuring cause."

Do you think my agent is right about this being a procurement cause issue?

I did not want to be forced into something that just because I was trying to save tax and used as true cash equity on my balance sheet it enabled me to scale my business in a different direction.but for this case were you have an elderly guy retiring.. trying to come up with complicated ( at least to him) tax schemes can be a tough sell..