I am based in San Marcos as well.Let me know if you have any questions at all or would like to get together like @Peter Chan suggested.Good luck and soak up as much info as you can.

I am slowly finding my way around everything here and I will be soaking everything up!

Soak up the info, ask as many questions as you like and stay connected.  

I am soaking up every bit of info I can get from BP and truly appreciate it.

I am a new investor as well so take my recommendations with a grain a salt, but like you, I have been spending A LOT of time on BP soaking up knowledge. 

I'm sort of in the same boat as you I am just soaking all the info in before I take the plunge into real estate.

One thing we did discover is (this property doesn’t have a basement it’s on a slab), because of the pet urine soaking into the concrete after cleaning, bleaching… we sealed it with Kilz oil based sealer to lock in/out the odors and ran my Ozone machine for a month to help with the smell.The Bear Paint distributor for Home Depot said we should have used water based Kilz and not oil based.

Soak up as much information as you can on this site.

I would like to get a local mentor that has experience in them and soak up his knowledge.

I was unsure if I wanted more of a section 8 house and just buy outright or something more substantial and use that $ as a DP.My mentor and I would go driving for dollars, chat, etc and I'd try to soak up as much as possible.So last month, I attended my first property auction.