When you give advice, people can learn a little about you to see where the information is coming from and maybe why you said what you said because of your background of knowledge.From having advanced degrees I would imagine that you have a very strong cognitive ability to solve problems quite easily on your own.

Much like in the industrial revolution when machines replaced physical labor, new technologies are now replacing cognitive tasks.

But not married to any location ;)  I agree with Brandon Turner's admonition to live where you want, invest where makes sense.Investing locally -- in addition to the temptation to drive by, sink time -- can come with a cognitive bias of thinking we know more about our environs, including material aspects, than we might.

Ask yourself Ron, with all the duplicity, hypocrisy, outright cognitive dysfunction, and virtue signaling you see here on Bigger Pockets, would you give any of these squirrels money on a nut they're holding in their cheek with only a remote appraisal of it?

I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) and I work with people with significant cognitive disabilities or mental health challenges.

This is a cheap little trick, or a regressive childhood strategy, or a cognitive dysfunction.

A lot of that can be conquered with the right cognitive strategies.Its never a "lack of information" that stops us but is instead the "other" stuff that. 

The more I see some of the monumentally stupid things that self-managing landlords who very clearly have no business being self-managing landlords routinely do, the extraordinary cognitive biases they obviously approach the work with, the more I am forced to agree on the whole with @Nathan G.Most people who want to own rental properties think of them as a passive investment and really shouldn't be running them.

We are in violent agreement, though you seem to be more conflicted than I am about it ... you should try to resolve that, it is not healthy to live life with that level of cognitive dissonance.The way I protect myself from a downturn is literally described in detail in numerous posts on this very thread and in my original response to you, it is a combination of equity AND cash flow AND reserves, all of which are created by appreciation.

Mental health refers to our cognitive, emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing.