On the other hand, what if you bought a property that made you $100.00/month?

You need to decide if you want to learn to do your own taxes (which is a positive thing to learn) or if it would be better to pay the couple hundred dollars and have someone else do it - and focus your efforts on learning something else investing specific.For me personally, I appreciated doing my own taxes for a handful of years until it started getting complicated enough that I decided that someone else could do it better than me. 

Cant wait to get this Central Park Condo in the Spokane Valley finished and in the hands of a new buyer!

It's also not a "job" where business is handed to you (some brokerages will give you a leads for a hefty split of your commission, but they will expect you to be working full time as an agent).

On the other hand, the seller may just be planning to do a 1031 and not actually have begun the process.

I want to have reserves on hand before going into it instead of having just enough for a down payment and closing costs.

The interest rate is reasonable.Dealing with banks, they are very hands on; particularly with income verification.The bank should do its own environmental assessment based on the environmental survey you provide. 

On the plus side, you see more deals by default and you  also learn the transaction process first hand.

@Alan Miegel it sounds like you want to be pretty much hands off and cash flow focused in a local market. 

The homeowner would like to sell to my sister or another "nice family" rather than just hand the property over to the bank.