Optimal placement of the indoor unit is important as well, I've seen some DIY installs that left me scratching my head. 

So it's a classic optimization problem, you have to find your sweet spot.I used to be all about cash flow when I got started and over the years it became less important, while the potential for appreciation has become more important for me.

You can't control the future and it's good to dip your feet into a deal, learn about commercial real estate investments, and continue to optimize for future deals.

I honestly didn't have a ton of luck with this, though we didn't do much to optimize it after launching.

We tried to add value to the deal by finding creative ways to optimize space in such a small house.

Columbus is actually the 5th fastest appreciating city, which if done correctly optimizes your growth for rentals.

With smaller income-properties, investors usually must make a strategic choice whether cash-flow OR growth of capital/equity is the primary goal, it is just not arithmetically probable to maximize both at the same time.You may ask yourself how you can optimize these metrics depending on the investor’s portfolio.

Thus better outsource on Day 1 and optimize your time to keep that income and increase to buy more doors.You use leverage in real estate via finance, why not do it on then operations / Mgmt side?

.- Optimize spreads between bid and ask: Zillow didn't do this. 

The decisions they make regarding their finances is not necessarily optimized for a real estate investor, meaning you can get recklessly negligent HOAs who don't make necessary repairs (like in the Surfside Condo Greg mentioned) or who are over-zealous in repairing/replacing things that work just fine.