The tenant contacts me that Sunday and asked about prorating being that it was the middle of the month or starting the lease in June (???)

Congrats on getting started on your goal.

My Wife and I are looking to purchase our first rental to start building cash-flow (typical story, building generational wealth).

You even customize your cleaning checklists, request photos and notes, and be notified at the start and end of the job. 

My opinion is while not directly correlated, when banks start losing money and increase in defaults lending tightens and large losses typically will lead to more job losses.

Quote from @Adam Czachor: If you're going to be an absentee landlord, I would start by looking for highly skilled property managers that can handle whatever you purchase.

For income reasons, you can qualify with a non contingent offer letter (salary position) before you start working.  

Rentals create cash flow, and that's what we want as real estate investors, but you need cash on hand for unforeseen circumstances.The AC needs to be replaced, that's $7K to $10K or more depending on the size of the house and if you have one rental, it will eat all your cash flow, same to replace a roof, etc, or if tenant trash the home, you need money to fix it again.To me personally a nice rental portfolio that is healthy consists about 10 units, so if you have an issue with a house the portfolio can cover the repairs and still healthy, but when starting you need to have cash on hand just in caseYes, there are multiple strategies you can use to hack your way to buy your first rental with minimum cash, but I would start wholesaling or fix and flip a few deals to create that cash as fast as possible

This is something that we have not tried yet, but are eager to start!

The whole set up was listed as 10k.Works for me and will do it again when in a sunny place.