One of the units I was looking to pick up had a wait list to rent out, I estimated it would take 2 year before I would be able to rent out.Also not all HOAs are created equal, since the are run by the residents.

We solve the data problem by working with the industry's best data vendors that have applied a lot of post-processing and enrichment to the original government sources, or have collected their own proprietary data.Not all of those vendors are equal in terms of accuracy, and we learned this the hard way through experience -- I come from the commercial real estate research world, and my co-founder from the retail site selection & revenue forecasting world.

@Kyle J. has a pretty good article on sources to use for pricing once you get done reading it head over to and read: Higher Rent Equals Higher Returns...

I split them equally.

We'd hold title as a 50/50 TIC between my solo 401(k) and my friend personally and each side would contribute equal 50% shares of all equity.

Rich Dad is a good place to start but honestly Kyosaki is flat wrong on investing and stock market, so I cannot get behind his beliefs fully.

That is not really true because your time spend equals the management expense.

As for your belief that you do not have the capital to start local I will once again use some related comments and let you try to decipher their meaning and relevancy:Local provides opportunity to house hack.  

This means you take the rent of all the units (including the one you would occupy) X 75% which has to be equal or greater than the Principle + Interest + taxes + Insurance  (PITI).  

So might as well start off equally weird: FREE!