I look forward to growing with you guys. 

If you are looking at duplexes... check out New Braunfels... decent prices (lot less than Austin) and growing market.

@Kevin MasonNotes and lending to other established real estate investors can be a good way to passively grow the account balance.

No landlord headaches vs holding for appreciation, but wow-the short-term capital gains (ordinary income rate) plpus the self-employment tax b.s. really reduces your profit.

You want a market that is growing and diverse.5.

My goal was to buy single family homes in distressed properties ( short sales, or NOD leads by calling home owners and seeing if they want to sell before they go into foreclosure)  in a growing population area with strong job growth and buy, add value , and rent them out for tiny bits of cashflow and wait for appreciation. 2 main questions I have at the moment. 1) How did you pick your market to buy your first investment? 

Note: I have a great job and will be investing capital of my own, I’m looking at the long term equity gains of using someones capital to grow quickly, I can also pay his cash flow out of pocket if I get in a bind, so I’m not worried about falling through on my contract to give 10%, which really is very achievable.

the company grows and expands.

If you create your chart of accounts in an excel list you can basically download your banking in excel format and quickly classify transactions with consistency.From there you can sum each account and quickly run a profit and loss report.I like QuickBooks because as I grow my portfolio I have all the functions I need and I can run year over year reporting.

Buy/hold is slower income build up but it is sustained and grows throughout your lifetime.