But as for my $450 home inspection, and 2-$200 plane tickets along with all the other travel expenses and days taken off work, am I just screwed??

$200 per door, $100 is too skinny, it's very risky in case a big ticket item or eviction occurs.

``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````I would get your Realtor licenseI would pay someone to get started. train you.FYII got started by interviewing home sellers after my boss trained me.His employees even did marketing and set the appointment for me.I made $500 a week, he made $5K to $20K a week.I quit after I interviewed 2000+ sellers and made him rich.Then I did my own deals. 

When you put yourself between a seller and another end buyer you are trying to sell to, it can be a really tight fit, especially if you can't buy it as required.Go deeper in your learning, what is on the surface as some ploy can be a train wreck in reality.

There is plenty of highly promising/almost magical real estate investing ideas out there for beginner like me, but I tend to be very weary of things that appear too good to be true (science background here, I've been trained to be skeptical).

Immediately I could see that the margins were too slim to be worth it, but I went through the entire exercise as a matter of brain-training.

I'll be at his training in Oct.

Don't go cash poor by buying another house, you have to ensure you have some capital reserves to fix some of the bigger ticket items if they go bad in the rental.  

Sure, it might involve you doing more research and learning more, but you could easily partner with an experienced rehabber, get 50% of the profit, make 25k on the deal, and get "on the job training." 

My parents own two rentals that I help manage, but until recently, I hadn’t realized that this type of asset could be my ticket to financial freedom.I began my search in early 2015 to find my first rental property to purchase and cash flow in San Diego.