I would recommend you start out with one property I would take out a loan to buy it, saving cash for further investments, like you said.

Trying to analyze keeping my primary residence as rental this calculation was done as a scenario to keeping my current loan the way it is.Purchased - $110,000Down Payment - $5500Taxes - $3999Minimum Rent - $1500Currently owe $89,000 and my payment is $1000I can remove PMI by paying $7000 towards principal saving quite a bit off that as well.Let me know if you need anything else.Seems like worth keeping but curious what others think as I am new to this.View report*This link comes directly from our calculators, based on information input by the member who posted.

There are so many great free educational resources online on the details of flipping (and saving on taxes), and even more on straightforward rentals.

You will not need to sell using a real estate agent which will save you 6% of the selling amount.

Plus it will be much less $$$, and will save you from feeling buyer's remorse.

This allowed me to save money to invest in real estate when I turned 18 however I have minimal past income. 

Utilities are a big one and keep in mind that there is 4 of everything now so plan to save as much as the cash flow as you can to build up a reserve for when stuff breaks.

In this way if tenants dispute items and it takes awhile for CAM to get sorted out then new owner can pull from seller reserve and then whatever is not used for short fall is then released to seller.Even if expenses are fully paid for by tenants you still want to keep costs as low as possible an still save where you can. 

Will save you a ton of money and time .

@David Greene said he could only do 2 deals a year because he would have to save the 20% down payment.