I personally would prefer to do my deals with a private lender at 20% rather than a hard money lender, but you need a track record with real estate before you can attract the attention of one. 

This is the other main aspect of having a low-stress group living situation in your rental properties. 

The main goal is to weed out tire kickers and those who wont qualify, as well as pre-screen to reduce the amount of time you waste.

Irrespective of the merits of any of these predictions though, it never hurts to have your financial house in order by aggressively paying down debt, building up cash reserves, and positioning oneself to capitalize on attractive asset prices, whether that's from a downturn/correction/crash or just from spotting an opportune deal that will do well in any economic environment. 

In the Marine Corps the main effort is the Infantry.

Being a current college student in the middle of my career, I was mainly looking for any tips/tricks to get started while still in school.

I own the main parcels (80% of the land with the utilities--appraised at $450k); he owns the other 20% ($116k), which is a split off a multifamily property he has.

I work mainly with investors. 

While the area around Temple got a lot better, it's still not exactly the most attractive area to live in Philly. 

TeresaYeah, I noticed that too - the properties with the highest cap rate are ones where the purchase price is fake - auctioneers to do to attract attention, even though everyone knows they'll end up selling for more.