If you are planning to major in a STEM, finance, business, pre-med, pre-law...goOtherwise skip it IMO.

Put a lot of sweat equity into it, delivered pizzas a few nights a week for some extra cash, skipped vacations...scratched and saved enough doing the little projects.

How will you know the work is completely satisfactorly and your contactor isn't skipping out with your money? 

@Denver Chavez ok, we will skip the "make sure your comps, zoning, permits, etc" discussion and go straight to the loan side.Having a 30 year fixed rate 4 unit property should still hold you pretty close to your current housing expense. 

But for some reason say REI and minds skip the entire operational aspect and leap directly to "ok, I buy a property and cash-checks, forever, awesome".

What are some skip tracing apps, websites, or software that are reliable that you can recommend.

Or maybe skip to the investments if you wish.

At the very bottom will probably be mobile homes... so you have to skip past those...and then you will get into probably the 'trashed' properties that you won't want... but just past those will start to be properties that are the most affordable in the area that could start to be viable rentals.  

I am trying to find a service that can help me with some skip tracing.

I know an investor that thought he was buying "a gem" and skipped the inspection.