Just starting my real estate venture so can't help with that.

I would really give a lot of thought to undertaking this venture in Pittsburgh if you are an out of town investor. 

I have been listening to Bigger Pockets for quite some time and am currently working with 2 of my colleagues (which I highly respect) to kick off our financial venture within the next 6 months.We have monthly and quarterly financial obligations for each partner to reach. 

Hi BP, I have ~6 years of analytics experience and have extensive experience in creating automated Excel documents that allow for easy visual calculations and/or understandable workflow organization.

I was looking in venturing down the single-family property route with a buy-and-hold strategy in mind.

In the future, we're open to venturing into commercial real estate, but for now we want to start small and learn our way up.

Create a joint venture agreement, share profits.

If you're excited about venturing into real estate, you just have to get into it.

The best ways to combat this I think would be, a.) joint venture with my parents (they already own 2 rentals) b.) get a large multi (5-8 units), or c.) possibly get a mortgage in my parent's name and pay them extra interest.Which would you guys recommended or avoid and why?

It's free for the lite version and when you scale you can opt in for workflows.