Particularly if you enjoy the area and could see doing your business there, I recommend the low-money-down house hacking route (#2).I think if you can manage your personal expenses and make sure to get renters in your extra rooms, you can use the rest of the money to launch your other investments.

No guarantees but it's looking very promising that we will be able to buy these for a price that really makes sense for our REI strategy.We are really pumped to hopefully get a great launch into the KC market and continue to grow from there.

Great advice from @Alex Craig here.Definitely DO NOT recommend you launch head first into crappy properties in crappy parts of Memphis.

Looking to grow my network as I plan a launch of a real estate investments in the future

Great topic and I look forward to your 'launch' @Marcus Maloney?

I recently left a full job to free up some time to manage those rentals as well as to launch my real estate career as an agent.

My wife and I just soft-launched our second vacation rental property; I'll be posting about it once we're officially launched and have professional photos taken. 

Hello, I am an IT consultant and I am currently in the process of launching my real estate investment company which I hope to accomplish during the first quarter of 2016, I am still doing my due diligence with regard to learning the business and building a network.

You can check out our blog on our site and there are launching short, informational podcasts on different topics each week, and we focus on most states besides California. 

I had the same idea as you that I would get my license, and be an agent which would ultimately launch my investing career.