As Robert Shiller said in a Wall Street Journal article a few months ago, people are beginning to think about real estate like they think about the stock market.What is your opinion about the buying frenzy in California right now?

Journal Square area is doable but has become pretty popular because of all the glitzy headlines recently about Kushner's new high rise rental coming to the area.  

Here's why (and apologies if this is too Excel geeky):If you do your own bookkeeping in something like QB, and can't easily import transactions, then entering them individually is a pain - especially with multiple cards/jobs, and if you want to track your expenditures at a more detailed level like Drywall, HVAC, framing, etc.Dumping the transactions to Excel allows you to pivot the data by data elements like Month, Job, Department, so that you can generate a summarized journal entry which can then be entered into QB once - you just need to keep the detailed data somewhere accessible for backup.Example:If I pivot my home depot detailed data for March 2015 I see that I had expenditures for one job for the following departments: BLDG.

@Bryce Bradshaw Sorry, I know this is a fairly old post, but have you considered using a journal specifically made for goal setting and accountability?

Record journal entries for all transactions - treat your rental like a business.When you receive rent, debit cash, credit revenue.

I have a two family in journal square.

It seems like everything is so focused on payroll, when I really just need a simple revenue/expense journal entry feature.

I haven't used it, just ran across it in the Journal of Property Management:www.GetRealGetReady.orgThey did a little bit of overkill on the Intro, but whatever.

I would keep a journal and pictures of the whole process to show a potential buyer the quality that was put in and no shortcuts were taken etc.

However, as @Darren Sager mentioned above, you should be able to cashflow properties that meet the 1% rule by reducing vacancies and other strategies.Some of the neighborhoods that I'm currently focusing are Journal Square, JC Heights, MC Kinley square and some parts of downtown that are still affordable (in terms of price/rent ratio).