But 2025 offers other opportunities that did not exist 10 or even 5 years ago - think AI and online businesses.

@Ken M. rents are softening in the places that have had a lot of new units come on line.  

The auction is online only.

I do not know this one specifically but most courses and coaches online are a borderline scam.Couldn’t agree more.

Having a great self-storage facility software for online management is key!!

Can't find much online....  

These are features like online renter payments, tenant portal (for payments and work orders), help keeping track of work orders, tax reporting features, and accounting functionality.

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.

Here's a list of things to track:- Formal lease application- Formal signed and executed lease specific to your state- Payment history (I recommend using online rent collection like Apartments.com, RentRedi, etc)- Maintenance requests and receipts- Accounting for all rental-related expenses (repairs, utilities, etc) The more you treat it like a business, the more helpful you are to your CPA come tax time. 

Quote from @Diana Teng: Hi all,I think my question above is pretty direct.I'm interested to buy my first rental property, and after doing a brief search I see that there are quite a number of places out-of-state (I live in NY state)  that offer affordable homes that deem to be in hot market areas right now (according to many different articles online).