With NNN, the lessee handles everything, taxes, utilities, repair maintenance.

I admire the fact that you work with under privileged kids..and the fact that you are not afraid to pick up a paint brush.

Pick what resonates best with your long-term strategy, or pick a few since you're only 20 and have plenty of time on your side and master as many as possible. 

Pick a solid B-Class suburban area.

Common sense says to trust the utility companies, but I don’t know why there’s such a huge desparity.

However, there often seems to be a disconnect between seller and purchasing investors.Although many investors know and understand that a prospective investment property must be at least 75%-80% tenanted when utilizing any type of financing for the purchase (esp. hard money).

My number one piece of advice to you is utilize it to your advantage.

I DID make some good contacts through the vendor booths and have been able to turn that into some positives however the hopes of picking up useful nuggets were few and far between.

The 1st would be to build credit by utilizing 2-10% (sweet spot) of available credit on your cards for a few to several months (to maximize your score) but two months before you apply for a mortgage pay all debt to $0.The 2nd larger issue is the student loan and the 1st step would be to get copies of your tax returns ready and fill out the paperwork to get on the lowest payment plan i.e.

I'm interested primarily in utilizing a buy and hold strategy with multiplex properties (MFR).