DM me if interested.We have a very active real estate community here from CTREIA and meetups from @Brandon Rush, @Stephanie Cabral, @Devin Peterson, @Ryan Luby in central CT.  

I am new to real estate investing and got into it because of the book The House Hacking Strategy.I live in San Diego; the rent is just crazy.

Hi @Dylan Fraembs and welcome to Bigger Pockets and real estate investing!

Beyond residential lending, I have a strong interest in commercial lending and real estate investment. 

That cost us 3k to fix Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Imagine making millions of dollars over the course of your career and then having to pay 30-50% every year to uncle sam instead of compounding that cash over time.This is exactly what real estate professionals have learned to mitigate.To reduce their taxable income, they just buy a building every year, do a cost seg, and use depreciation to reduce their tax liability dramatically.Their personal wealth snowball grows much larger and much faster than their W2 counterparts who give most of their money back to the government each year.Following this strategy as a real estate professional is one of best ways to end up with a much larger net worth at the end of your career.

I'm almost positive I've seen Memphis real estate agents post on the forums.

@Joel Bongco how do you go about setting it up for real estate investors?

There are several "real estate programs" out of their that the FTC made return millions to people. 

Use Real Estate By the Numbers as your guide, make sure it tracks the loan pay down and depreciation and have all of those numbers pour into a Schedule E.