@Latessia Harvey welcome to BP. there are a lot of agents on here that seem to only comment to pick up clients in threads, just because someone is on BP does not mean they are reliable.

I wish there was a simple step by step instead of guidelines of best practices, but every deal and investor is different just like the pies.Anyway, I house hacked 2 of my rentals, my first and 3rd. 

I posted "Please do your due diligence or even just a simple google search on Morris Invest" and that was quickly taken down.

Such a newbie thing to do too.... oh it's just a simple cheap way to bring up values!

An article that I found worthwhile which may be of interest to some and I haven't seen picked up broadly yet comes from UCLA Anderson and is entitled "Single-Family Rental Returns: What Drives Investor Return?"

QB is pretty darn simple - I'd make sure you have a basic understanding of accounting concepts first.

At last week's Real Estate Investor's Club in my area, I did pick up some information on Real Estate IQ software that was essentially RePropFinder.

Simple, they want to do it all.Owners that have 15+ properties with commercial/office/retail/residential will most likely to focus on getting more deals and less of the traditional services.  

I picked this thing up for $40k. $5,000 down payment.

As to my WHY, well that is pretty simple... make enough money passively to allow me to support my family, continue doing the things we like and build a legacy for the future.