Second, I hope to delegate as much as possible, for maximizing the passiveness of my income structures.

@Kelsey Mortimore find deals that you are comfortable with, even if there is a drop in RE prices. 

Usually that comes at a price of a lower commission split. 80/20, 70/30 or even less % to you until you feel comfortable.

I kept the addendum I used and just added a couple sentences that made tenant comfortable while still protecting me.

However, I quickly realized (with the help of my wife) that before we could comfortably start investing in real estate, we needed to make some significant lifestyle changes.

I believe in maximizing your land use - so if you can fit an additional "unit" without having to go buy some other investment out of state, pay RE fees, closing cost, etc etc etc - you end up saving some of those costs and reinvest into the land you already own. 

If you aren't able to comfortably and confidently establish values in any given area, you may want to ultimately avoid it to save yourself a headache and $$$ in the process.

I started this project hoping i could efficiently review the most amount of properties in order to maximize the potential investment options to bid at auction....this is what I have so far.First thing i did was to create the listings, I matched the properties been auctioned with their corresponding pics and the property specs (rooms, size, floors etc.).Second, for each property I automated the data collection process from public records and created a report with: Foreclosure info, owner info, taxes data, liens including mortgages , satisfaction of mortgages,  assigments, violations and permits and court dockets.This data is updated daily to capture new filings (specially the dockets to capture bk and motions to cancel sales)Now that i have the data i can apply my personal "preferences" to go through the report and in a few minutes discard  properties that have certain attributes I "dislike". 

Because we’re pretty comfortable with this tenant, we would prefer to not use an agent to save on the commission.

Invest where you feel comfortable.