I'd spend a hundred bucks on a phone call with your CPA before you start in case you inadvertently do something that sticks you in a less than optimal tax situation.

I'm very much a product of my investing environment, but this strategy would not necessarily be optimal for all or even most other markets.

REI is a huge probability density function with infinite possible outcomes, some more probable than others, and you need to be able to pursue strategies that could work for multiple positive outcomes.You will want to optimize everything to the nth degree when in reality you are operating in a highly constrained sub-optimization environmentYou will tend to develop elaborate models, and believe what they tell you with certainty when in reality many things are not known or knowable because there are just too many variables at playRE is a people business.

Save the marketing cost and time and step up on a deal The reason people do paid marketing, is to scale and have some sense of control on how many leads you get.If 100 dollars gets you 10 leads, the idea here is that 1000 dollars gets you 100 leads.See, most people do not understand efficiency.If you have a team and you are paying a team and your team can handle an X number of leads a month, you better feed them X numbers of leads, otherwise you are not running your business on full capacity and efficiency and you are leaving money on the table.So you DO want to have some sort of control when it comes to running your business.Now you can either hire or fire based on the amount of leads you have (not very optimal in my humble opinion), OR you can  hire the necessary people that would help run your business smoothly and then do the controllable, scalable lead gen platforms to match the lead flow to your man power. 

Add in that large funds sometimes need to buy more than they can at optimal returns, and they might play the appreciation game on either value or rent. 

Build websites, learn technical marketing tricks like optimization of your ads so you spend less money but reach out to more people, learn how to fix your own computer so you’re not wasting money by having someone else fix it for you.Ultimately use this time in school to build relationships, learn skills for free, and start your business.

They are qualifying you as much as you are qualifying them to see if both parties are an optimal fit or not.

Better to get good value properties in good areas, optimize their revenue, automate as possible, get good support staff, top quality online systems, serve your clientele, learn how to perfect your process, etc. 

Your focus should be on optimizing rent growth, vacancy, and major expenses.

There you are in your Panama Jack hat, smoking your puffy with your wine, the light of youth and optimism alive in your eyes.