You are looking in two counties that will vary greatly with demand/pricing so that might be a big reason why you are getting such a variety of responses when asking what the market is like. 

Philadelphia (in certain gentrifying areas) might have the largest potential for ROI in appreciation, but you can get steady cash flow in a variety of locations depending on how much you want to spend and what cap you are looking for and if you want to do a little value add, a lot, or none.

This year in advance rent is not uncommon and there's a variety of reasons for it.

On this second part, I have done a variety of terms from just offering payments with no interest to adding market interest BUT paying it only once per year on the outstanding balance.

It has some very useful information and a wide variety of guests. 

When evaluating PMs, it is important to understand how a PM may be skimming profits in a variety of clever ways that they keep secret from the homeowners.

We're interested in out-of-state b/c we currently live in a HCOL area, but want to get started ASAP, which means looking at more affordable markets to start gaining experience.We however consulted our financial advisor a couple times, and have received push back on doing out-of-state real investing for a variety of reasons, including 1) we are currently renting in a HCOL and are saving up for our primary residence buy which is in another HCOL area (LA as want to be closer to our parents when we consider having kids, so this is a bit non-negotiable), which we aim to have enough funds for by end of 2024, 2) we have a fair amount of student debt that we want to aggressively pay off once loan payment freeze ends in 2022.Wanted to share our situation with the forums here and get some feedback.

We also carry a very wide variety of finish options as well (Kohler, Delta, Andersen windows, Pella windows, etc.) 

If you want I could send you their info and you can chat with all of them if you want some variety!

Wifi does use the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, but both frequencies have been used for years for a variety of different electronics.