What I'm mainly looking for in the beginning is to provide some passive income from rental properties.

I remember reading an article on here not long ago, can't recall the title, but the main idea of the article was that with direct mailing campaigns, you can expect to receive about 5% of the amount of the initial mailing to contact you and that you will only close on about 2% of those deals.

@Justin Lee At this time we are mainly focusing on out of state investments, mostly buy and hold with some flip opportunities.

I chose 2-4 units mainly because of the area I buy,  In Chicago there are:445 SFH for sale with an average price of $1,150,000195 MFH for sale with an average price of $560,000In the area I buy in Milwaukee:79 SFH for sale with an average price of 52,800121 MFH for sale with an average price of $72,000In Chicago (North Side) it is just not feasible to buy SFH - in fact, our housing stock is less than 20% SFH and more and more you are seeing MFH be bought and converted to SFH for flips because they are so much more money.  

Just starting out in my investing career and my main focus right now is going to be wholesaling.

Downstairs: gutting and opening up the kitchen, adding a dishwasher, gutting and enlarging the main bathroom and gutting the 1/2 bath, enlarging the master bedroom closet, adding laminate floors and new paint.

My main goal  (as with  many others here @ Bigger Pockets) is to become financially free through investing in real estate. 

Accessory dwelling can be up to 33% of the main dwelling or 800sqft.  

It ended up being around $220 as well because they covered the parts and labor for the main job but the water heater required some soldering and pipe rearrangement which was not covered.

The house was vacant and sat open to the elements for 8 months in Utah and it was over the winter.