Choosing your market is extremely important.. 

These days homes can be extremely expensive and I'm not going to spend my hard earned money to settle for a home that has all these funky changes.   

Go to Etsy and search for "rental property tracker," and you will find hundreds of nice spreadsheets to track 10-20 rentals, usually for under $10.Software has extremely helpful features like online payments, marketing syndication (click a button, and your property is advertised on multiple sites), electronic document review/signing, maintenance tracking, and owner reports.

I would say its extremely important to have a quick (like 60 second elevator pitch) for why you want to enter the business and what returns you are looking to get. 

Orlando is very competitive, therefore you have to provide an extremely clean, themed out home with close proximity to the parks in a community that also offers great resort amenities. 

The HOA might encourage swift action, but the authority usually lies with the city.PS: Texas counties have more power over land use regulations than cities in some cases, which can influence how properties in rural areas are managed after a disaste

If the owner lives in town, you could even go knock on their door, I find this to be extremely successful when you are going after foreclosed properties.As to your 1st post, you might want to look at city data for growing markets, It looks like Rochester lost population last year, vs if you look at sunbelt cities like, Houston, DFW, Austin, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, these cities saw at a minimum 1% population increase.

My sister and I could then be “employees” of the business, with managerial powers, and the businesses would be in a trust to avoid probate at the time of my fathers passing.  

I really see Columbus Ohio as an extremely safe bet for the next 10-20 years.

I was also appreciative of Dave’s patience and exacting answers to any questions and was clear to me he has more than perfected his craft.The title company had a portal that collected all the documents and laid everything out in phases that I could log in at any time to see progress.As one who is extremely organized I felt I was in a safe space and knew any issues would be addressed.