So you have a full time w2 job, did the research and study before you were ready to choose the property then do the presentation to get financing?

Multifamily has great tax benefits such as cost segregation studies that allow you to significantly accelerate depreciation which keeps more money in your pocket to keep investing.

Great advice from @paul_timmins Dedicate a lot of time to study and learn , a little everyday will take you far Read the posts here in BP constantlyListen to the podcasts here in BPTake notes in a particular notebook or other place, this site is huge and at some point you will not remember were you read or hear it, so is good to have important things handyStart looking around your local area, for distressed houses, to have an idea of the market use resources like zillow.com,  realtor.com, home.com, homesnap.com, etc. those are free sites and you will understand the real prices looking at recent sales (less that 3 or 6 months and less than a quarter mile from the house you are studying) take notes in a log, focus in an area you understand, don't look all over the cityDon't fall for the "9,998$ special offer just for you but we need to close in 5 minutes" of the gurus and the after sell "guidances"Print some business cards, Meet people in your local Real Estate Investor associations, don't be shy, try to connect,  try to learn the ropes offering help to somebody, give value to them and probably they will help you and most of all be patient, this takes time

After a bit of studying and being on the forums and reading, we finally went to a few banks and got approved for a 500K HELOC.

I picked two random houses off zillow, in a market I don't study, and literally didn't even go past the first page of results ( I have no idea how it was sorted).

Who knew we'd be 43 years old and still studying and taking tests!

I read @David Greene and have been studying intensely to figure out how to do this long distance.

I didn't worked during this period and I realized that I am not good or interested  in my field of study.

Sounds to me like you need to do some more studying before jumping in.

I hope everything goes well for obtaining your agent license, be sure to study well for the exam as the law portion can definitely be tricky!