Pay off your debt first unless you like being a very high risk gambler.Real estate investing has a great deal of swing and having bad debt will likely cause you to fail when the hard times come around.

Or, you could also swing by my place to see my project in action.

Would it be smarter to grow my nest egg quicker or wait for the appreciation (which should probably take about 5 years to be in full swing)?

That quest ended me reading Flash Boys, books of Barton Biggs, Reminiscences of a Stock Market Operator, books of Tony Robbins Market Wizards, Tower of BASEL, tRADING IN THE ZONE, The Millionaire Mind, think and grow rich, youtube movies of "Wall Street", Boiler Room, Enron, Epic Trader, Meltdown, Million Dollar Trader, Barbarians at the gate, Margin Call, Rogue Trader, Floored, The Big Short, Last Days of Lehman & you name it.

I would, however, recommend getting in touch with the HOA to determine if you can swing a deal ahead of the auction. 

I bet if you step to the bat and take some swings, after two or three attempts you can really get some good experience under your belt and really start to crush it.

Though now he's a director/manager at a large corporation in their int'l trade division.

At the end of the cycle, I "recycle" my list (rerun it, same criteria - some folks have moved out in the last 6 months, some new names show up because they've moved in to my criteria - bulk of the list stays the same)Once the list is recycled, I start over....rinse and repeat as they say.It can take several months and several mailings to build momentum, but once the machine is in full swing, it should start filling up your pipeline.

He then also needs to spend more time in the real estate trade/business than anything else.

In a rehab, the CG swings a hamer as well, he takes his hourly/contract price +.The job; plans and specs,it will take 160 hours of labor and unskilled trades at $12 an hour average or 1,920. 60 hours of skilled trades averaging $24.00 an hour or 1,440 for a total of $3,360.00 for labor.Material cost estimated at $24,500.