Another concern is the massive personal mortgage my father obtained in 2021.

B grade property walks are attended by my children to run around and tell me which bedrooms they would pick if it was their home.43605, 43608, 43609 are the popular zipcodes for bottom-budget value purchases...I manage a ton in these areas and my personal portfolio contained over 40 43608 properties at the peak. 20% of these properties will be crazy money earners, 20% will be astounding money pits, and 60% will fare average.I have evolved into the nicer 43612/43613 for my personal portfolio and find the properties earn consistently and far smoother than my 43608 houses. ($80k renting for $1200 vs $40k renting for $800 multiplied by the ratio above vs boring consistency of the nicer area) Oh and I have zero excitement for apartments.

@Robert Trevino Right now in my market the cost to build is just so much greater than the cost of purchasing existing that unless you’re building a personal home no one is building.

It's definitely ramping up, and I do recommend caution and personal research as well, but that is true for any out of town investment.

My perspective comes from a lot of personal experience, including a couple of properties I chose to hang on to for many years, because it would've been more expensive to dump them in the interim.

This topic can be very specific to each person's situation. 

From what you've showed, I'd say your main focus should be working on your personal finance foundation rather than diving into an investment.

My personal rule of thumb for profile age is that if the profile was created before 2015-2016 (when the internet started to get a bit crazy with misinformation ahead of a certain presidential election), I'll generally proceed as long as they're interacting like a normal person (not a bot) and their profile looks otherwise legit.

The Operator or the HammerThis is the person that actually runs the physical asset - property and asset management, project management - takes care of the day to day gritty details of operating rental property.

They have a lot of great insight into the specific needs of the community that you may struggle to find on a website.