Interesting thread....For whatever its worth Eddie was at one of the Atlanta REIA's tonight and pitched his note school with 2 different 3 day classes, scheduled at different locations throughout the country. 

Kris,Hey I do a ton of investing on Indy and have a lot of connections if your looking to expand and Network. 

Attention to detail is a big one for me, make sure when they wrap up jobs they do the right work and finish the job clean without having a ton of stuff missing 

However, if you're running your numbers then you'll want to make sure that you're including all the interested paid for the money borrowed from your HELOC as well as the carrying costs including utilities, insurance and property taxes.

I know there are a ton of great brokers out there, but there are also some duds - to put it mildly.

Will definitely utilize it all soon :). 

@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.

What are the expenses (taxes, who pays utilities, etc)?

Are you paying any utilities as the owner, aside from water and user fee?

I am a fan of utilizing equity in existing real estate owned to build the rental portfolio though at the beginning, rather than just relying on money saved alone.