What I am finding, that the most difficult part is the part you said: I believe it to be only $35-40K in repairs. 

I have a town home in the Frayser area that is a 3bd 2 1/2 bath with a balance of 4k owed on it recently new carpet, painted . 

So it can be a difficult transition to go from adding value, banking on appreciation to simply placing an investment for cash flow only. 

I say trying, because unless you know someone it is very difficult to get started.

Difficult to generate positive cash flow at that cost.

If you have multiple people door knocking with you it seems like it would be difficult to keep track of everyone and make sure they are not stepping on each other.  

I help investors from California every day- there's a great balance of cash flow and appreciation here- you can certainly do better than anywhere in California! 

.#1 is more difficult to answer because the dirty secret in the syndication business is that asset management fees are almost always described as “1%” but the similarities stop there. 

Hi Jared, I'm in a similar situation and I've found people on this forum to be super helpful.My opinion is when you are so new and inexperienced, it will be very difficult to find a mentor.

I will admit that it was difficult at first to set money aside because all throughout college we barely had enough money to pay our bills and now we both had good jobs and had a significant amount of additional income.