You won't give up yet....after a while you finally find a gem,  but it ends up being a total rehab or gut project and if you are not equipped to deal with that or have the knowledge or time to do it....you are now bummed and decide that you can't in fact be a real estate investor and now you are going to have to suck it up and work that 9-5 job you hate forever and hope your retirement account is healthy when you retire.

I can see it being a nice place to retire. 

(They spent most of their retirement money paying for son in law's cancer treatment.) 

I wrote a top 10 takeaways from Secrets of Successful Syndication, which you can find on BiggerPockets via search.Others in Texas which I have not attended but are popular include Think Multifamily's events and Brad Sumrok's Rat Race 2 Retirement (and others).Do you want to learn to syndicate, or to invest in multifamily on your own?

I think you also need to decide what your ultimate goals are... if it's to build a cash flowing portfolio of 5-20 units to build equity and cashflow for retirement, investing close to home and doing your own management makes sense.

I use it to track all our properties, tenants, all our accounts, both personal and business and even our retirement accounts.  

We are currently running through Coach (Chad) Carson's real estate class and I have read his book Retire Early with Real Estate ( a good book from my position).We are currently going through all of Paula Pant's podcasts and the FI podcasts.Some concerns have popped up.

The County Seized His Property, Sold It—and Kept the Profits.A state law allows counties to effectively steal homes over unpaid taxes and keep the excess revenue for their own budgets.Eric Boehm | 11.6.2019 7:40 AMAn 83-year-old retired engineer in Michigan underpaid his property taxes by $8.41.

Someone might have great net worth but it is tied up into retirement accounts.

I'm also encouraging my mother, father (both nearing retirement age) and "investor-minded" friends to do the same.