Hi @Aaron Bellerose, I really admire your energy and excitement!

A lot of people have gotten burned purchasing "training" that was all fluff and no substance. 

Also, Milwaukee is economically very diverse, from well below poverty line to very wealthy (nearly all of the top end is either in BIG $$$ condos downtown in high rises and 3rd Ward or mansions along lake north of DT on the trendy for decades "east side")If you're yet another person wooed in by the seemingly amazingly low buy in prices and decent sounding rents, which seems to happen every 8 minutes or so on here now, I'd advise to proceed with caution, old stock that's beat to hell and city has been burned by too many slumlords, so even if they think its a 5% chance some out of state buyer could be slumlord in waiting, they'll drop a hammer on you and hard and as I've said 100x, they can write code violations exterior on 98% of the homes, but pick and choose when to do so.

The areas I am in are working class areas, no burned out vacant houses or gangs or anything like that. 

Combine that with the fact that younger consumers are spending less on retail purchases and more on things like travel, and eating out.The vacancy, home owner rates, tell me it is a good time to be a real estate investor.The DOW plunging tells me maybe I should consider buying the dip....and I am in fact adding energy stocks and mlp's.

I didn't burn any bridges with the original company because I never know when I might have to call them back. 

You've already put in time and energy and have a potential deal, why would you give up that time spent?  

Ultimately, the time and energy I was putting in to learning and analysis of my ad campaigns was distracting me from learning more about real estate and developing my DM campaign.

To make a very long story extremely short: I assisted a friend with the purchase of her first home a few years ago and of course now, am being burned, after circumstances led her / her family to multiple late payments and eventually missed payments, which ultimately turned into foreclosure.We have been in process of trying to execute a short sale on the home for about two years now with no luck..

I'd love to connect and chat about the biggest concerns or burning questions you have as you prepare to self-manage.