The truth is that the vast majority of rental properties are bought by newbies who know nothing about the rental property business (i.e. ignorant newbies), who will crash and burn in a short period of time.

As investors figured out they could get good returns from securitized debt, and at the same time they were looking for a place to stash their money after the tech crash, the demand for CMOs, CDOs, SIVs, etc. skyrocketed.

He was scrambling to have it ready before the first guest arrived. 

Be very careful with this though, if you have shorter term financing like I do prepare for a down turn, I have no idea how much values fluctuate in your market, and if your note need to be renewed in a down market, you better have enough equity, or a pile of cash to bring in, I have seen many investors collapse because they harvested too much equity, I limit my portfolio to 40% LTV, im running about 35% on 21 properties right now, so i feel pretty safe, I was through the last crash and saw some guys i thought had it figured out crash and burn, just a word of warning. 

Zillow and their subsidiaries are trash...mashvisor too...none of these big data firms can explain how they actually arrive at their figures...at least Core Logic has been in the game since the beginning of time and RPR is the direct path to the real estate market as it exists for listed properties, anyway... 

maybe, maybe not) and coming from out of state,....she arrives....but has no way to get to her hotel (red flag) so a person who works for my PM volunteers to go pick her up at the bus station and drive her to her hotel.

Search “crash” or “bubble” and you will find oodles of threads.But to answer your question my thought is to not wait to get active, but invest using a strategy that will work in any market.

The insurance adjuster arrived and did his thing, getting lots of info from the cleaning guy and the photos he needed of the damage. 

I check it every night before bed - and again in the morning - and usually when I am in the middle of my personal transition time when I arrive home after work and fighting Atlanta traffic for over an hour.

My other buddy was crash fire rescue out in 29palms.