For example, should we focus on acquiring one high-quality property in a strong market, or would it make more sense to spread the investment across multiple lower-cost units in emerging areas?

Can try to reposition to Class B, but neighborhood may impede these efforts.Vacancy Est: Historically 10%, but 15-20% should be used to also cover tenant nonpayment, eviction costs & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores of 560-620 (approaching 22% probability of default), many blemishes, but should have no evictions in last 2 years.

Can try to reposition to Class B, but neighborhood may impede these efforts.Vacancy Est: Historically 10%, but 15-20% should be used to also cover tenant nonpayment, eviction costs & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores of 560-620 (approaching 22% probability of default), many blemishes, but should have no evictions in last 2 years.

In the desert it costs me LESS than $20 for water.

Whether the seller was open to a buyer commission or not, I wouldn't put an additional cost into any personal purchase.  

Just make sure you set up a LLC to rack up the required experience.

The cleaning and repairs cost a conservative $2,000 because you did all the work yourself.

It's great for cashflow and our entry level costs are lower than a lot of other markets.

Debt service is way up, revenue is generally down, down payments are way up, financing terms and costs are much worse.The time of fast scaling has passed, unless you're very creative. 

Most traditional property managers don’t handle this setup due to challenges like managing tenant disputes, coordinating overlapping move-ins/outs, and the risk of Fair Housing violations when selecting tenants.