It can eat into your cash flow, but if you're earning high income from your W-2 job (I assume you are if you're buying in all cash), it makes more sense to use your time making more income versus managing maintenance requests as you scale. 

The allure of fat cash flow (at least on paper) and the low barrier of entry (down payment) never stop attracting new investors. 

While the RentRedi's loaded with various toggles/buttons and affordable given the all-you-can-eat pricing, the interface is still very elementary and lacking in usability/design, which is often overlooked as a key determinant of whether your team actually adopts and fully leverages powerful management solutions like these.

Higher property taxes can eat into your profits, so it's essential to factor this into your calculations.It's worth asking yourself if you'd want to live in the markets you're considering.

Here's a quick breakdown:Unforeseen Property Issues: Hidden damage, bad tenants, major repairs – these can eat into profits.Vacancy Woes: Empty units mean lost income, impacting cash flow.Market Downturns: Property values can drop, affecting your investment's performance. 

Up until then I was cheerleading the earlier thought experiments about supporting lean/regular/fat income with ~$1000 / month per paid off SFH, thinking “I could bang that out in 5 years”.

That means, when they are damaged it doesn't eat up the whole security deposit leaving more money to cover other damages better protecting me. 3.

We plan to remove them all to protect from tax increases on our current primary, but I am afraid that now that the other properties won't have homesteads, we may see skyrocketing tax bills and it will eat into already small cash flow from rental income.Does anyone have advice for how to handle this situation other than just increasing rent?

I would say for most people, the 1st position heloc is no a good bet, especially if you have a 1st mortgage rate of less than 5%.Using this strategy with a 2nd position heloc can be just as powerful, so you can have your cake and eat it too!

One capex issue or tenant turnover is going to eat up years of "cashflow".I would advise you to work on getting a smaller number of high quality units rather than scaling to 20.