YAI Yet Another Introduction

[Eric Wooley]

I've read "The book on Rental Property Investing", "Rich Dad Poor Dad", and starting "The Millionaire Real Estate Investor", as well as listened to a ton of Ryan Morrisons Podcast, and A little bit of the Bigger Pockets podcast. 

I am a Web Developer / Software Engineer by trade, and have recently taken an interest in real estate. I'm working on software to scrape craigslist for real estate lists and rental prices, determine trends and find less traveled paths as far as investing goes. 

I am also proficient in crypto, crypto currency, and distributed algorithms.

I am also considering making a MMORPG for investing (finding private lenders, lending privately, stock simulator, real estate purchasing simulator, etc...). Any interest?

Most of the questions I would have are around getting started, specifically, the timeline of how to get started in buying real estate with low money down, at a remote location... I live in the central coast of California, so it seems like remote investing would be better. The main question is, what do you do first? Get pre approval, travel to locations, identify a good market, etc... Can anyone in a similar situation share how they got started?