My wife will be the main live-in caretaker for the consumers (clients) till we have a stable income and then we will hire our a live-in caretaker for the property.

It can be time consuming because there are spammers/fake leads that could waste your time, but if you're willing to put in the time and filter those bad leads, the chances of you renting your place out will be high.

So if your debt (consumer or mortgage) is above an 8%, then feel free to pay it down to lock in that return.

If you did and had problems leave them a review with the Better Business Bureau, here and also contact the FTC Consumer Protection division.

Most Mortgage Banks have the ability to broker some loans and attempt to call themselves Brokers now as consumers are getting smarter and starting to realize in most situations Brokers have better rates.

As your price is fixed, but rents appreciate, margin grows as long as you did things right and make sure expenses don't consume your margin growth. 

It works over time, but the problem I see there is that you are consuming junk as well as having to make decisions on what is actually valuable information.There are plenty of opinions on how to do such on Bigger Pockets, but a lot of those opinions are misguided or wouldn't apply to you.You can do joint ventures with successful investors.

if your immediate area is too expensive, i'd pick a couple markets between 1 and 3 hours away, learn them, go to meetups, look at properties, get connected, research strategies, walk them, narrow down to 1, repeat, etc.and if that sounds like it's too time consuming or something you're not interested in... no worries. 

Since tenant selection is the most time consuming and highest risk activity, that may be a compromise to get you started.

Investors do this to protect themselves in the event the note goes into default, they can avoid a judicial foreclose (expensive and time consuming) and just take the property back, and resell it.