But is it fair for you to get a huge equity stake, capital appreciation, profit (at no risk and with no skin in the game) AS WELL AS being paid a nice management fee? 

End game would be commercial properties such as large apartment buildings. 

My folks have an agent but I'm interested in finding an agent more my age (someone a little more savvy with the game than these days.. like bigger pockets ha)

However it does resemble Monopoly money and you don’t want people subconsciously associating your business with a game.

If you're okay with that and want to play the appreciation game, then I can understand that but it's all speculative investing at that point.

Is it better to lock in housing costs in the area you want to be, or is it better to start the rental game asap even as an out of state investor newbie.Thanks all!

Here's the problem: I keep hearing two different things.I'm based in Montreal, Canda and the game here is mostly to buy distressed apartment buildings, drive-up the NOI and RE-FI (the cap is really low, so it's almost impossible to buy for CF).

The current owner is Airbnbing them out for $800 per night for the games.

My wife just fired her property management because the owner has been playing games about charging her repairs on her house without giving her the price before the works and deducted 3 months of the rents plus she also have to pay over $7,000 in addition to  the works which only partially done and ignored even after several complaints.

Or invest it in Real Estate.You could buy a bar (or some other business) with that money and let him run it (with your oversight) learning how to actually make money (vs being a wage slave), then after a few years turn it over to him (once he matures and only once he has some skin ($$$) in the game along with you).Just my 2 cents.