From my understanding the rise in home prices can be mostly attributed to low interest rates and governments backend buying Mortgage Back Securities.

I attribute all of our growth to honesty and having great people working for our company. 

So you definitely should include all expenses attributable to that property and related activities.Hybrid approach: Maybe ask a bookkeeper to show you how to track one month for a fee and after that you might get the hang of it to do it yourself.Hopefully that helped!

Even if you have to attribute to those categories with your own money.

My ONLY attribute is tenancity.

I would just attribute that rent to the month they move in, but I would still have it in hand.

Not sure how much can be attributed to seasonality but ~17% drop in prices from May & ~12% MoM seems pretty significant at face value.Do you see such a large number of expired/withdrawn listings putting a cap on the market in the short term?

You can convert the passive income from the rentals to active income to establish a retirement plans, but you definitely need a professional help to determine if that is even doable based on your cashflow and other tax attributes. 

Did you expense the improvements made specifically attributable to the rental portion when you reported your rental income on that portion of the property, or did you capitalize those costs and depreciate them?

Would love to hear how your selection process works when picking a place that has factors that can attribute to solid appreciation/return when you have never stepped foot in the state.