I've found the transition from what we've been doing for a long time to the next or alternate chapter to be a longer and more fluid process than 'in a few years I'm going to do x all at once and go in direction y'.    

And using incorrect terminology--I do plan to buy and hold vs. flipping--what I think I meant was house hacking, but that even may be the wrong wording.    

Ohhh sorry about that buy and hold is what I meant

Also I did use a 5% of annual rent for vacancy purposes but I do self manage so I'm assuming you meant a cost for property management.

Kudos to the knowledge pool here.Taylor-sorry if I portrayed 2 stories; I didn't mean to say he didn't want to sell PERIOD-he put it on the market-I meant to say that I was told he "is fine if it doesn't sell"; I took this to mean that at less than X below list price, he'll just keep the prop.

I meant 8949 indeed

A hard money loan charges a high interest rate and is meant to be short term financing.

We listened to a few of Robert Kiyosaki's books and he made it sound like we could do no money down be being a little creative, and we could also do non recourse loans and we assumed that meant the bank wouldn't require huge capital reserves.

Thank you @Max Householder that is what I meant, I appreciate it. 

My main goal right now is to learn the ins and outs of the industry, and purchase my first property before the start of 2018.On the reading list right now is:The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Real Estate Investing (Brandon Turner)The Miracle Morning (Hal Elrod)The Book on Rental Property Investing (Brandon Turner)Since these first posts are more meant as an Ice breaker, I'll throw out that my favourite kind of ice cream is vanilla, because it pairs with toppings so well, and tastes good by itself.