@Steve PuglisiIt sounds like you are wanting to target distressed situations to locate off-market properties with potentially motivated sellers.

They may even need to have sort of certification.

The Real Estate Rookie Podcast is filling in the niche with sort of what I call the realistic investing for regular people. 

If you didn't and you just expected an answer, I might not have called you back either without some sort of payment.The same thing can be said for CPA's

Hello, I am a sort of a newbie investor myself and looking to invest in sort term rentals with family members that haven’t done any RE investing.

It can motivate others, so I am told.

(must live in it first and hope to only live for a year before moving to a home for my partner and myself)Anyway I am trying to sort out an excel spreadsheet that has - a list of properties- what they are listed for- what I would like to get them for- rent- rate costs and extra expenses- loan repayments- monthly and yearly income- and ROII am just having a bit of trouble understanding how I work ROI out.My first example is 50k of my own money with a yearly return of $1872Do I do 1872/50000?

Or are you expecting to have some sort of Perry Mason moment where under your questioning he slips up and admits to being an Al Qaeda operative using your address to receive shipments of plutonium?

Propstream allows you to apply specific filters that will help you find motivated sellers.

You'll have to become an expert at finding and converting motivated sellers + an expert in analyzing deals (including construction and acquisition costs).If you want to eventually get into buy & holds, I'd start there... you can start with a low-down-payment owner-occupied househack, multi-family or other rental property deal.