Living for a year or more in your first investment property will help you acquire the skills you'll need later in life: managing real estate properties, managing contractors, finding tenants, etc.

Investing out of area is no rocket science but it does require set of skills and systems to follow. 

It's not a very high-skill business on the individual employee level.

Dues need to be reasonable for current owners and resale - budget needs to work and the overall care of facility is vital.

Then you will need to incorporate another set of interpersonal skills into this transaction process to make it go through.

I believe my job has given me the skills to tackle on this career path. 

I have many skills to bring.

Often it is a matter of finding properties that match your advantages, if you are skilled and can do some work yourself, if you know rents in the area (or have a real estate agent that also manages properties in many different areas), everyone brings something to the table.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's any more littered than than any form of passive syndication where OPM is used by someone who may or may not be actually skilled enough to produce. 

If they were very skilled.