lets see, ive rehabbed nearly 60 mostly vacant dumps and turned them into decent ( rental) to excellent (flips) places to live, now generating tax revenues, water bill revenues, env fine revenue,..where once they did not, improving the looks of the neighborhoods for neighbors and the city simultaneously.

Investor activity is lower too, which means you don't have as much competition securing good deals when they pop up, though there are some bigger active investor groups/family offices that have been running the show for generations. 

Play the Cashflow game and you will understand that the goal of financial independence is to acquire enough income producing assets that generate enough monthly income so you can afford to live the way you want without having to work. 

I have a tech background so I'm gonna leverage that for lead generation, it will take a few months though to rank for keywords I plan on targeting. 

That property generates a monthly income even after payments on the loan and property management.

Everything I've heard and seen on the site so far, seems to suggest that you should keep acquiring as many properties as you can so long as they can generate enough cash flow to pay for themselves and give a modest return.  

If you could buy a property for no money down and it would generate $100,000 a year in NET Positive cash flow but the interest rates was 20%, would you care about the interest rate?

Start generating leads, then hand a stack of them to your prospective partner.

From there if you can raise rents 2% per year (or bill back for utilities and/or generate other income) and expenses are held in line by year five your cash flow should look like this:Rents and GOI are up 10%, Taxes and Insurance bumped to show expenses up 11% and NOI up 9%.

No verbal exchange is necessary and it should be avoided in my opinion because it can generate arguments and conflict.