I started in real estate in earnest about 10 years ago while I was still a W2 employee, but thinking of finally hanging up my hat with a primary focus on real estate investing.Cheers,Lawrence

There is a black hole around 100 - 200 units where profit falls off dramatically as you hire employees, rent/buy office space, etc.I know some manager that are killing it with 100 units.

Working on behalf of yourself you can pretty much run your business anyway you want including the roles of your employees. 

Also make sure your insurance is cool with you having employees and make sure the equipment is good.

I did a demo with IMS for about 2 hours and it is a nice system.Unlike some others they do not manage the back end or investors you still have a cost with paying an employee to manage the system.Who do you have managing your back end relations for investors,payouts, and reports?

We let our agents/employees give applications out to potential tenants who want to rent their personal properties.

My hesitations are borrowing from a friend/employee, and how to structure the loan and what documents to use to protect both of us?

With God's grace, in 2016 I got hired at one of the hardest companies to get into, but as a part-time employee.

Any google, FB, Apple, etc. engineer working 4-5 years that purchased stock through the basic employee stock purchase plan should have several hundred $G’s saved up in that alone.

The broker with whom I work on a few project referred me to the title agency that handled all of our closings that has a "foreclosure" department.I have starte the paperwork, release etc.The title agency employee mentioned that we would set the starting bid based on everything that is owed to me and that of course I was free to bid on the property.