The margins/ROI is larger on smaller properties but the benefit is that you can do your due diligence from anywhere and lots of the processes can be automated.

Check out Airbnb Automated on Youtube, very informative.

You can even set this up as an automated email template and if you have a good insurance agent they can help you do this!

However, the way to make this work is by automating your savings.

Automation put 10s of thousands of them out of work.

If you don’t have cash reserves, you shouldn’t be investing anyway.Long story short, the habit of saving, no matter how small, is more important than where it goes...especially early on.Leave that guy, go to Betterment and start automating your deposits.

Additionally, there are some tools available to you where you can bring a certain level of automation to that rental management process (ie. automatically syndicating a single listing to 10+ major listing sites, thorough tenant screening with full background checks, digital lease creation, automated online rent collection, and maintenance tracking).

I’m a dock worker for my 9-5 and I’d like to protect myself against possible automation taking over my job by investing in real estate.

The management so far I handle and record through excel spreadsheets/ text message to tenants (all automated payments).           

Maybe they've improved that by now though.I haven't played around with the automated leasing side of Appfolio yet but have not been hearing great things about it, they have the ability to link into Blue Moon Forms so I will explore that as an option.