Understanding the basics of real estate investment, market analysis, and property management is crucial. 

I moved into a condo with an HOA and they have a property manager.

The negative 1K per month includes the property management fee.

You will hire 2-3 of the wrong contractors also and lose 10-15k in walkway money.Your first try should be to do a flip as a smaller partner with someone else, a friend, a local investor from a meetup, so you can learn the ropes, know how to manage a crew, etc.

This is perfect being 2 doors down from where we live so we do not have to pay cleaners and property management.

That does seem to help but most self-managers just use the 2 OTA without a PMS. 

Hire a sober house manager who has significant clean time.

However, it was taken from one of his seminars so it is nice to have a live recording of him talking about it and such.Go to ronsgoldclub.com and you get a free 30 day trial along with his wholesale course....and anything else you can manage to download in 30 days.

What is the value add to the builder for his time, management, experience, subs, etc.?  

We've been managing our properties for 2 years now and been doing a lot of the work ourselves to save money, such as yard maintenance, cleaning, unit flips, etc.