If it happens to be bad timing, you may not be able to sell it in which case you have to hold onto it and try to rent it out to produce income.Note buying is only passive if you do it through a syndication or crowdfunding site that will handle all of that for you.

You can just use other sites.  

I've looked into advertising on zillow/realtor, Facebook and other sites but with no experience I'm not sure on which one or if any is most beneficial for a new realtor at a relatively unknown brokerage.

Great that you joined the site!

This could be the same realtor helping you purchase the property OR you can look on public listing sites (Zillow, realtor, etc.) to check out listings in the area.

I am trying to keep it SIMPLE, avoiding complicated calculations, loans, etc.

With the coming of online vacation rental sites like Airbnb, true occupancy is not disclosed, and we're left to guess.The result of guessing is some level of inaccuracy (mild to wild), which brings criticism to market pricing / availability tools.

I also look on sites such as Forbes and Business Insider about the best markets however, I would prefer to be more self sufficient than relying on blog posts from entrepreneur sites.

This site has a ton of valuable information and has many helpful members.

other wise they can out source all of what your doing pretty easily with VA's etc and the direct mail guys on this site but those guys don't work on performance you have to pay up front and direct mail is very expensive.