Things may be vastly different then it appears.

Ten years ago, you could buy a lot of three-year-old books dirt cheap for five bucks each, so I could assemble an extensive home repair library for not much money.Nowadays, the three-year-old last-edition print books are a bit more expensive, but there are a lot more higher-quality videos out there, there are forums, and a lot of the stuff is simply easier to do than it was.

The vast majority of the homes in the area have not been updated and are using older furniture etc.  

These concepts are vastly different from the thread topic of buying a note/CFD through Paperstac.

If you are buying in an appreciating market the appreciation will vastly outperform any sort of cashflow you get.

All of this @Firoz K. comes down to 1-simple choice, you and a great many just like you as your in the vast majority on this, will have to make a choice: (A) Throw in the towel, give up, blame "the market".

Several of them have recommended some books and others recommended just reading up in general, so I went over to the library on Saturday and picked up everything they had on REI - which wasn't much, they had 2 books.

I would only recommend investing in such areas if you have expertise doing so.I wrote a piece a while back making this case in detail which you might find helpful: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/2016-01-26-vast-majority-...

Be sure to get that cleared up since at 5 units and up its considered commercial property and has vastly different loans. at 2-4 unit you can still get residential loans but down payment might increase.Third thing is that clear up how much a new build would cost.

The vast majority mix up word sand terms because they don't care about all that, what they care about is "SHOW ME THE MONEY".