I pull pretty solid lists, I find a lot of my deals off market, just thought I could reach more if I have a few full time callers on the phones.While i'm at it, how are you guys finding good deals in today's world?

Do they have solid banking relationships and broker relationships to lease out the units. 

Quote from @Matt McNabb: I'm a solid $400k/yr job in NYC and have $250k to begin investing as my first step into building a portfolio, although I don't have time to be a landlord so I have to account for management fees.  

and you also can't waste time while under contract.

. --- Who gets all the phone calls and wastes time calming a tenant down because the owner's contractor doesn't show up as scheduled after they took time off from work or a 3 day job takes 3 weeks?

You should fire them right away and talk to an attorney to prevent the loss, but I wouldn't expect much and it could be a waste since a company that does this will not have the money to do anything.When you have just one unit and you are looking for PM companies, your options are the bottom of the barrel because it's not a good use of the big one's time.

Both strategies have potential here, so it depends on your goals:Strategy 1 (Duplex) can be a solid choice for building equity and generating cash flow, especially in Austin’s competitive short-term rental market.

Just in case.Ultimately whatever correlates with your future plans but a solid way to build long term wealth.

Don't waste a lot of time analyzing.

Build a solid foundation before taking a step up - each and every step of the way.There’s a way to scale recklessly and there is a way to scale safely.When OPM is involved safe is way better than reckless.Despite a life long career in RE, I scaled as followsBought a few duplexes for my own accountBought a fourplex for my own accountBought 12 units as a JV with some friendsSyndicated 43 unitsSyndicated 30 unitsBought another 12 units as a JVSyndicated 281 unitsThis was over a 3 or 4 year period.and so forth - now I am GP in close to 1000 units with $125M AUM.Even with all that, my sweet spot is 30 to 50 unit properties - they work best for my partners and I and more importantly our investors.