It teaches the starter steps of investing, managing, and upgrading properties with a fairly low up-front costs.

This is what I am thinking:  I would consider my first property to be an owner occupied property for 6 months- 1 year ( ie, mom living in it while I work on any fixes necessary) then save enough from my other income sources and mom's "rent" to rent out the first place to upgrade mom to a nicer home.  

Even when I bought my current residence, with what little a access I had to the MLS, I knew I was going to have instant equity with some cosmetic upgrades to my home. 

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Like the guy who gets in a car crash, tells the amulance driver he's looking for an emergency room with a surgeon who gives discounts because he has multiple broken bones.Sorry, I couldn't resist.Visually all my work is with attorneys.

It is much harder to make business decisions when you know the person it affects.Finally, the home appraised at $250,000 even though we had several offers at our asking price, not to mention the upgrades that were above and beyond the average home in the area.

Since the plan has you selling the properties after a few years to upgrade, paying down the property doesn't make much sense.

When they do move, I'll upgrade the units and bring the rents up to marketJust my opinion, but as long as you're cash flowing and the tenants are good, I'd do whatever I could to keep them

I agree with Charlie, you definitely need to look at comparable properties and consider what type of upgrades are really needed to make it sell in that specific area and DO NOT just use Zillow to comp the property I would recommend at least 3 or 4 different sources and an investor friendly agent.

The GRM was under 100, but the tenants turned over far too rapidly (higher average vacancy rate) and the property was older (higher maintenance cost), and the tenants damaged the property as well (yet higher maintenance cost, note broken window syndrome).