We are looking to eventually relocate to the States"--that's great, a lot of people want to invest remotely in a totally random market and never go to it.  

LTRs with long term conventional financing and standard management aren't really cash flowing anywhere right now. sure, there are lower cost markets that look better on paper, but there are costs associated with those supposedly cheap markets as well - deferred maintenance, more challenging tenant base, higher cost turnovers as a percentage of the rent.2. i wouldn't pick a random market thousands of miles away based solely on statistics or numbers. 

so if you're impatient and just buy something random it's not going to work and you'll just set yourself back.

It might because they don't want any random person just setup a property management software to make it look legit and using it to scam people (tenants)

Random question: has anyone cashed out their retirement (or part of it) to invest in real estate?

I randomly picked three OTC parcels in an Arizona county and did some basic research.

Learning from agents commonly working with investors is your next opportunity to find a mentor.To be honest, I wouldn't try to find a mentor from random investors on the internet.

We just randomly switch out cores between tenants.

County, State and Federal rights supersede the craziness that some random liberal city council & Obama impersonator try to pull. 

And got a couple houses from random lines of credit from banks.