I am looking to take 20k-30k cash towards buying rental properties in an effort to have a combined 100 units in 3-5 yrs.

If you don’t have the funds to renovate, the bottom line is that two options are a lot better: 1) Combination of traditional mortgage and home equity line of credit.

Like Greg says, where you live could be very different than where you want to invest.If you definitely want to combine the two, consider a duplex to 4-plex.

@Aaron Signer,Bump up your repairs and CapEx. 15% combined is usually good.Any shared utilities that you'll be responsible for?

If any work, both materials and labor combined ,  valued at $500 and below, you do not need to have a license to preform the job. 

When you screen tenants you should be ensuring that their combined household income is at least 2-3x's your rent amount.

You basically work half the year to pay for crap.  

If the guy is a piece of crap you will hear it from seasoned investors .

Zillow says both units combined rent for $1325, what are the rest of the numbers?

buy land get it up zoned and approved for HBU and flip timber tracts that you can instantly log and resell we made millions doing this on OPM .. and it viable in the Carolinas etc.since its a full time gig you need to look at more robust ways to create income than as you already understand drip income is not going to get your were you need to be in a short amount of time.. rentals is a very LONG game. so you need to be looking at crap properties that can be turned around and resold if you can do them in 13 months you get cap gains.. and or rent them for a year or two and you can roll up for a 1031 and keep velocity going that way.. but again I would not be so keen on just giving up 300k a year  many of the landlords on this site can get to that 5 to 10k a month and that's all they need to live on.. someone used to larger income that usually wont cut it.. so scale has to be huge to replace 25k a month..