And allow yourself to stay within the price range of property that maximizes your noi2.

Discipline of registering expenses as they occur.There are other software suites that charge and have more complexity. 

and we aren't afraid of a property needing some cosmetic TLC -Duplex, triplex, or quad that we can house-hack; 300k max budgetSingle-family home (3 bedrooms max); would like to stay around 150k if we go this route.

You will be trying to break into the market and may be too late while those that stayed in from a knowledge perspective have an edge over you.

The way that I look at it is.. you are going to find many people who are emotionally attached to their home and will want to try to save it and attempt a modification to stay in their home.

Here's some safe advice, Stay Local and join your REIAs and Meetup groups.........much, much, less expensive training(compared to Gurus) with much better content.Sorry for the long post but needed to comment on my disastrous experience.

My initial attempts have been to create a FB business page, and add as much content as I can, in hopes of staying in front of my contacts.

I would suggest staying in California if you can since you're new to this, because unless you have some boots on the ground in other states it might be pretty inconvenient to have to fly out there if needed for some property emergency (like the home catches on fire, flood, etc.)With 25% down you can make the numbers work in Sacramento.

I generally would recommend to stay away from any transaction involving disqualified person.

Net migration is due to increase in the next couple of years and tougher mortgage rules have forced potential first-time buyers to stay in the rental market.