In tight inventory markets like Boston, I encourage clients to clearly define their purchasing criteria, start looking, and then be patient.Some of the best deals I have seen or experienced personally happened during unusual circumstances.

If so, self-managing properties might not be the best use of your time - In any case, I'd encourage you to talk to multiple local property management companies, keep the above in mind, and understand how they approach management.In my experience, property management isn’t just about finding the right tenant or collecting rent—especially in a tenant-friendly state like Rhode Island.

We had a client that bought in Port huron and then ended up selling their property because they went through 3 PMCs and gave up trying to find a great one:(Some copy and paste advice below:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.

We often use zoom showings, but they build on that mutual in-person experience.We don't encourage bottom-of-the-barrel neighborhoods, simply because with 60-120 year old properties capex tends to exceeed cash flow over time aka money pit.

Multifamily mindset has recruited students from all walks of life such as teachers, medical doctors, veterans, real estate agents, business men, and I was included into a group (multifamily mindset encourages students to form groups) and one of them is a veteran who is divorced, has kids to support, not employed during that time, got a loan of $40,000 for the tuition.

I'd encourage you to be tight with your lease & learn the local laws so you are compliant.You will definitely be a young landlord but how you handle yourself will set the stage.

And all of that with training wheels, it is very hard to screw it up on a consequential scale.Because it is 2025 and RE is not cheap anymore I will encourage you to also look into building a business on the side.

I know some investors who are interested in larger multifamily and encourage me to go find the deals, which makes me really eager to try to get after it.  

I would encourage you to speak with property management professionals and a property management attorney to get an idea of what procedures you should have.

I normally do not encourage people to forrm entities for real estate, but if I were investing out of state I would have the out of state investments placed in an LLC chartered in that state.