Most rental properties will trade at very low cap rates (3-4%) and then if you get financing at 4%, you don't have any spread over expenses to cash flow or even pay your operating income.  

My primary focus right now would be on rehabbing/ flipping since I'm comfortable with the trades and love to work with my hands.I'm sure I'll find tons of information and motivation here and hope to contribute back.

I was thinking about hard money Jeremy but I haven't started to network for possibilities and I'd rather make a mistake and lose my own money vs someone I just met what would be the consequence if the flip didn't make money besides me losing all creditability.

I know of a recent 10 unit 50s style that traded hands.

For hands on experience/learning find work in the building trades, property management or a large corporate apartment property company.

Conventional and Government (FHA and VA) lenders set their rates based on the pricing of Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) which are traded in real time, all day in the bond market. 

CDSs are not traded on an exchange and there is no required reporting of transactions to a government agency.[6] During the 2007–2010 financial crisis the lack of transparency in this large market became a concern to regulators as it could pose a systemic risk.[7][8][9][10] In March 2010, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (see Sources of Market Data) announced it would give regulators greater access to its credit default swaps database.[11]See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap#...

This assists me with timing deliveries, booking the upcoming trades, and overall coordination of the many moving pieces that go into the inner city project.Just last we we counted over 25 different tradespeople attending the site to do a variety of tasks, from sewer install, trucking concrete, all the way to spraying on foundation damp-proofing.

so we may see a big boon in folks remodeling and exiting home as opposed to selling and trading up. 

They may have access to trades and you need more than a regular guy who won't even show up.