You won't be managing from afar, so find a quality property manager before you find houses.

Hello,I have a preapproval for 3% down payment conventional loan, as I own no property.Haven't found a house I like, I wanna be patient looking for my to live-in house, but I still wanna get a rental property where income covers all costs while looking for my own house.My question is, can I get a normal 20% down conventional loan for the rental, and then later I get a conventional 3% down loan for my house?

How are SF landlords managing this situation?

Travel expenses can be very tricky - there are a bunch of bifurcations based on if the trip is primarily for personal, primarily for business, or somewhere in-between - including the allocation of airfare and other costs. 

I'm currently a senior in college and am on track to graduate with a bachelors in facility management this upcoming spring.

I just wanted to make sure that 8.5% for vacancy, 7% for repairs, and 11% for prop management is relatively accurate.

The cost of financing will contribute to these rates and help you learn what your costs can be and how much cash you may need to tie up.  

What strategies are you guys implementing to optimize this cost? 

Imagine making millions of dollars throughout your career and then having to pay Uncle Sam 30-50% every year instead of compounding that cash over time.This is exactly what real estate professionals have learned to mitigate.To reduce their taxable income, they buy a building every year, do a cost seg, and use depreciation to reduce their tax liability dramatically.Their personal wealth snowball grows much larger and much faster than their W2 counterparts who give most of their money back to the government each year.Following this strategy as a real estate professional is one of the best ways to end up with a much larger net worth at the end of your career.

We pay them back at close.For people/teams that do something similar, I'm curious what software you use or spreadsheets you've created to: Track cash current cash flow and projected cash flow for the whole business that including fixed costs like payroll and variable costs as well.