So far I'm thinking buy and hold for a relatively passive income stream, but the more I've been reading, the more interesting opportunities I've been learning about!

My end goal is to get another stream of income that will take me into a comfortable retirement.  

Who of you watched that baseball movie that came out in the 90's where they guy built a baseball field in his backward so that the ghost of legendary player's could play?

Cap Rates really don't apply until you get into scenarios where there are multiple streams of income on a property.

You can improve marketing, revenue streams, cut expenses just like any other property for the value add.

. $10,000 isn't very much in the way of a partial, definitely not enough for a full note (though I have seen some $16-18k notes recently), so the partial that you buy would have to come from someone who may have bought the note with intent to just keep it.As Bill mentioned, when you buy a partial, you're buying the front end payment stream.

I love my day job as a software engineer but want to have multiple revenue streams and rental properties look like a good opportunity for steady cashflow and long term wealth.

Yes, the headache will be there, but sounds like you'll have a team and if you can target 8-10 of these deals, you'll have a nice stream of income...

I don't focus on residential or TK but when looking at those properties and areas look at various companies  and compare and contrast risk versus benefit.In those bad areas to find a good property manager you might have to pay 10 to 12% or more management fee as the tenant is more intensive and more difficult to protect the income stream.

I help and show people how to create streams of income so they can start building a retirement real estate portfolio.