My plan is to live here for four or five years, then use it as a rental property.

Started with $0 net worth, a credit card, and FHA loan on a 4plex when I started.

There's five 3/1 properties in that zipcode under 11,000 on the MLS right now so I think that price could be too high.

Again, talk with your accountant (maybe a lawyer too) but...One of the biggest challenges I think a lot of 'full time conversion' REIers face is 'how to pay myself in a way that isn't self-employment' ... it becomes a huge deal when you're doing silly little things like, say, getting a cell phone, or a car loan, or a mortgage, or lines of credit... or a credit card...This is where it pays to spend the time and money to set up your LLC/C-Corp/S-Corp correctly so that you can pay yourself on a W2 or through an S-Corp and not have the problems/taxes associated with a 1099.

One home I did a small design for is part of a historic homes tour this year, so I'm going to sneak in my card and a tablet with a slideshow so people walking through can see. 

And yes there are apps that integrate to make your life easy. for eg Bill and Pay for recurring rent, email invoices, portal for tenants ACH or credit card payment.Here is what you can accomplish after you have written your instructions you should be able to pull up reports by owners, property, units, tenants, vendors, employees, hard and soft money loans, including constructions... and anything you enter and more. -- chart of accounts is just the starting point-- rent roll-- tenant - invoice, statement, payments, credits, recurring rent - advance-- security deposits -- work orders - completed, tenant's call, --lease expiration -- email's - has also a mini CRM build in--as to owners - summary and detail, reserve funds, -- Get reports for everything you enter... create pdf or export to excel .

., says he has spent about $350,000 purchasing five rental homes in the Indianapolis and Cleveland areas through HomeUnion over the past 18 months or so."

HELOC's are just a credit card secured by your property.

As you acquire more debt, in this case real estate being good debt, versus credit card debt (revolving), which is bad debt, you just need to be open and honest in the interviews and there won't be any issues. 

The goal is to have between 8 - 10 units over the next five years.