Starting a Real Estate investment group?

I've been working as a Realtor for about 7 years now and I'm considering starting a real estate investment group. What's the best way to get started? I'm mainly interested in aquireing rental income properties. Any information on financing would be extremely helpful. Also, is it better to manage your own properties or have another company do it? Thanks in advance for your response.

We've been doing this for a while now and this is my advise- First and foremost put together your "team" this should include, a mortgage broker, a property manager, a title company ect.

Don't manage your own properties, your time is better spent looking for the deals. As far as the financing, I myself am a mortgage broker and the way the market is structed right now you either have to have 10 - 20% down for a conventional loan on investments, but I did manage to find a loophole in that. There are a few companies and banks that will do 100% on 1-4 units under their rehab program. The way that do that is with an after repair value. So if you find a two unit building that is bank owned for say 50K and the repairs will cost 30K but the appraiser said that after it's fixed the value is 120K, they will give you the money for the purchase and the repairs. The interest rates are higher but usually there are no payments for 6 months. They look for ratios that are 80% or below.

Good luck and I hope some of the info I gave helps you out a bit.

Come to the REIA meetings and meet some friendly current investors. Then start looking for some deals.
My site is RehabList.com is a great place to look. It has FREE wholesale listings in Bronx County. It also has free links to automated valuation tools, mapping of leads and even free education opportunities for new investors like yourself.
You can also post your group's or your own investor contract assignment deals for quick cash to one of about 1000 of our Bronx County site members. You can sell a property you have rehabed or rented to them too. Just post it and put up the PICTURE on the site. As a RE agent or broker you can post listings for investors free too! You can double dip and get both ends of the commision by reaching RehabList's huge investor membership.
You know the $ value of this advertising, So tell your broker friends too. It will be great for them, great for the property owners who must sell now, and it will be great for our Bronx investor community.
This is all free to the entire Bronx inverstor community at RehabList.com for Bronx County.
I just took over the site and will be building the listings to benefit all investor buyers and investor sellers. I'm going to make it a great place to find the best deals fast.
Good luck to you! And never quit on your dreams!