If you applied both strategies simultaneously, you could buy multiple at a time now while RE is "on sale" and when it starts to climb down the road, you will have the advantage of many properties gaining appreciation.

ROTH IRA's that are self-directed are now the hot topic as it is a way to avoid capital gains on real estate.

i have seen nothing but wasted money from email lists. firstly, ESPs are becoming very stringent about spam, making the inbox a near impossible place to reach.secondly, email harvesters tend to use spammy practices that make your list of x,000 become more like x0 of actual valid email addressesthirdly, people on these lists by permission are rarely interested in the offer, and more about the incentives offered. and the ones that are on without their knowledge rarely respond to offers and are more likely to report you as SPAM and never use your services.if you are offering a valuable service, another approach would be to speak with landlord associations and try to arrange to be a speaker at one of their networking events, or to have your contact send your email to their members.

Some lost and some gained.

As an new investor the information i receive from other investors such as yourselves is very valuable to me and others like me.

That being the case here is my reasoning based off of my knowledge and the knowledge that i have gained from biggerpockets.174000*.65 = 113000 - 76000 =$105500My question is this ...

Welcome to BiggerPockets Eric, You are in the right place to gain and share knowledge!

If you have the resources to jump into wholesaling and can make it work, more power to you. but, a college experience is valuable too, both for your emotional growth and for a degree to fall back on.

No free software I know of, an if you're going to be in the RE biz in any capacity ou should want to pay for this valuable software as it will cut down on the wasted time?

I plan on living there myself when it's complete and maybe even putting it on the market just to see if I can make a nice gain.