Lots of great meetups here as well if you'd like to come out in person and meet many of the top players in person.

Anyone have a good example that they can share for C/D class properties? 

Great way to scale it up. where do you go to get a lists Propstream, LeadSherpa, The Share Group, even the big residential RE players like REDX and Vulcan7 have absentee owners.

No real player will do any meaningful business with the people they can't trust. 

,I do C/D properties, so I know it wouldn't work for the fancy A/B people.. but the absolute smartest thing  I did about 4 years ago was doing EVERYTHING the exact same  white-- Du Jour - semi gloss-- by Valspar at Lowes to be specific.    

Assuming you have the drive, capability and desire to be more of active investor/player this is what I would do if I had $10,000 to start out.I would first get really really good at underwriting deals …and then find a property that has a 25% amount of equity upside in the deal day one and also a combination of healthy cash flow that can support the property DAY 1!!!.

Moreover, while there is currently a lot of hype around seller financing and low and no money-down investment strategies, the reality is you need capital to be a player in the space.

The hopes are in a few years they'll rent for more and then you can hire a PM then if you need.Just find something as close to the 1% rule as possible (analyzed at when you move out and have it fully rented) and it should cash flow or break even.If you're running absurdly conservative numbers, then sounds like you shouldn't buy any real estate and should stick to a low risk savings plan like a CD, money market, or 401k where things are less volatile. 

Once we start talking about bigger pieces of land that that woulud appear to developers (i.e. homebuilders or developers who do self storage, medical office, industrial, retail/commercial) then I usually can market to them without necessarily having to put on the market, because I know who the players are in SoCal, and that helps especially when seller doesn't want to do an exclusive listing, but will let you bring offers off market.But in general, for random pieces of land that aren't necessarily for the big developers/builders, you certainly need to put it on the market. 

So, there's a real world example; Now you can consider Detroit or Class C/D investing, but do you have the stomach for it based on the returns?