You have to do your due diligence up front, but once you put your money in it is very passive and you just get your monthly or quarterly return (if you picked a good investment).

I didn't have a lot of money- but I could have been smarter about it.

An example of this would be mixing your personal money and LLC money in the same bank account.3.

I trust my agent but I also would like to be able to verify what they told me was true especially when it cost me more money.

My idea was to establish myself with some paid-off, cash flowing properties to make leveraging them for more investments a lot easier.I'd like to flip some houses to generate some cash, but  even knowing what I know I'm struggling to see how to make money doing so. 

If you have no debt and can save up a bit more money, before getting to the equity loan.

I don't know the rent amount or security deposit amount but if they're not paying, many times they don't have the money.

House hacking it for a year or so, could allow you to build up extra funds for a future down payment, furnishings, and other costs. 

Question, with loan interest rates at a high currently and cash money sitting in the bank making 4-5%, maybe have your partner do a private loan for 6.5-7% short term until rates comes down??

How can I take this money and put it down on a couple properties and use them to negate the tax obligations?