The equity gained during that time from being in a high appreciation market, combined with not having much rent and being able to save for a down payment on property #2, was truly life changing and totally worth it. 

Then is cash is tight find a property where the seller is motivated to sell or maybe it has been sitting on the MLS and has a high DOM.

Note: We haven't made any decisions yet, they just seem like a quality option and wanted to figure this out before we got too far into deciding which applicant.

@Kevin DuongShort-Stay Rentals (STR) can bring in a lot of cash but also come with high costs for when guests come and go and tough rules.

Hello everyone, With deciding to start in real estate, my main goal is to create enough equity in the properties I obtain to build a house and buy land  (10-12) years down the line.Though the market always changes, I figured with investing into highly appreciating markets now, the properties I buy will accumulate the equity needed to be able to sell in the future which in turn will lead to the income needed to build and buy land. 

My experience was getting my personal credit utilization high as I bought product for my business, and subsequently my FICO went low; therefore financing was increasingly difficult. 

And also engaged with institutional investors on a regular basis.I'm highly entrepreneurial and figured out that what I really want to do in my professional career is US multifamily investments.What I've done so far is selecting the markets I'm interested in (in TX), building a comprehensive financial model to analyze deals, and creating a very detailed due diligence list.

Property is a C class area, so I am concerned about the quality of tenant I will get but I am close to Ohio State University, a hospital, and short north/downtown columbus so I am hoping as long as I screen tenants I can find some promising people.

You have to determine what is the quality of person you are trying to collect from.  

If you sell a property in one year or less after owning it, the short-term capital gains is taxed as ordinary income, which could be as high as 37 percent.