It was the lessons learned here that led me to go for it and purchase my first investment property.I currently own a duplex (house hacking) and have rehabbed it to the point where I can make substantial cash flow upon moving out. 

That's actually the first blog I found regarding FI and led me to find many other interesting blogs about FI and how to achieve it.

Brian, I invested in a deal led by one of Brad Sumrok's students.  

This growth has led to increased property prices and a rising number of people moving to the city for job opportunities.

That desire led me to BP forums where I met the Carl's and started learning about investing in STRs.

Then, I again getting worried asked about filing tax returns and asked if they would still be $2000 or less, and was led to believe that “yes, that about what’ll be”.Well, we got a bill for $2684.25 and my wife said we are moving on from this CPA and finding someone else who “won’t charge us $575 to answer a couple of email questions”.

but you never know when you get lucky and hit one.. out here on the west coast its basically illegal to do this .. but its state specific.to put it in context before the laws were changed.we did a lot of this work.I had 3 teams of two each  Man and women each team.. we door knocked EVERY NOD in our 4 county market  2 million metro.. this was a few hundred doors a week... with all of that leg work this led to one to 2 deals a MONTH> they were usually pretty good as I would not buy anything that I could not make a nice spread on.. sometimes we got a few more than 2 but not often .. this was just another arrow in our quiver.. direct mail in this instance was a waste of time and money.also speaking with them more than 10 days out of the sale date was fruitless. 

@Dave Gallogly I just did a bunch of research and if you are talking a common area, with 2 bulbs (that's what most of my duplexes have and you use LED bulbs [I do in all my properties, they are cheap now, and a selling point]), then you are using about 10W/hour/bulb or 10W/hour.  

Of course, like most people, my research has led me to Bigger Pockets.

Thank you to all those on BiggerPockets who have shared their stories and knowledge that led us to create our networks, systems, and relationships in order to make these kind of deals happen!