This is the time to double and triple-check your calculations because even a single mistake can be financially devastating.

Totally agree with this Dan.School teaches us to "Ready-Aim-Fire": we have to make things perfect and making a mistake is look down upon.However, as an entrepreneur (I consider being an active real estate investor as being an entrepreneur), it really is more "Ready-Fire-Aim".

I know my mistake when I started was getting so excited about my first deal that I didn't take time to think through my goals and strategy.

Additionally, you have wiggle room to make small mistakes as you earn without severe consequences.You are right, thouh. 

Between learning from some minor newbie mistakes and the information here, I hope to strengthen my portfolio.

There is so much you need to cover and look into in order to make sure everything is kosher that it's easy to make mistakes.

Since you want to do buy-and-hold, listen to my podcast interview as I reveal my worst investing mistake (I bought a 36-unit apartment building) and how I turned it around (by buying a 100+ unit apartment complex!).

My goals with BP are to learn from others mistakes and successes and share some of my experiences.My goal with real estate investing is to build a debt-free portfolio of income producing properties that I can pass along to my children.

I am hoping to get some feedback here without judgment as no one can make me feel any worse about my past mistakes than I already do. 

However, mistakes do happen, and it is also not uncommon for a document to not get recorded properly, or not get recorded at all.