I’ve had this issue multiple times in different rentals and the easiest, the most obvious, and sometimes the only, way to figure out what’s going is to open up the ceiling where it’s leaked.

While running a large group of small landlords in Philly, i have visibility into the full realm of challenges that new investors face - and some are quite overwhelming and totally unexpected because they jumped in without fully understanding what they jumped into. 

@Dennis GallagherIt's my understanding that the "Income-Expense Ratio" primarily use operating expenses as the expense variable, which includes costs like utilities, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, repairs, property management fees, and trash removal, all of which are considered when calculating a property's operating expense ratio (OER).You calculate OER by dividing the total operating expenses by the gross operating income of a property.

Total reno cost: $85K.The best part?

Obviously, if they go out of business, I don't get much or anything back from my principal, but the same is true of any stock as well (I owned AIG stock in '07 & '08 haha).

Hey Kris,I totally get where you're coming from—I live in California, and it's a similar story here.

Obviously the course designers have huge success in RE, but I am more interested in the course they developed and what I should expect to get out of it. 

I learned the most from doing deals the most than watching podcasts so totally agree.You should be able to find more agents if you click on the "agents" tab on BiggerPockets

Having worked in corporate architecture firm for 13 yrs before opening my own firm, I understand your basis @Jay Hinrichs and it's totally accurate.

The obvious advantage is property taxes.