The common perception is that to advance your skills, gain a promotion, start a business, or even transition into another type of career would require going back to school to learn more, when in many cases a significant amount can be accomplished through self-study and taking action to develop skills.  

I think part of it is perception not 100% aligning with reality.

He's gotten in to syndicating multifamily, and he raises money for two funds - an Accredited fund and a non-accredited/sophisticated fund.

I might have missed something on the government site.I know that in the UK, the regulator there, the FCA, has a path which allows a non-accredited investor (the UK term: restricted retail) to progress to accredited (the UK term: sophisticated).

Not sure how sophisticated you want to get with your market analysis, but when getting started, I kept it relatively simple and created a spreadsheet of home sales and rents.

Houston is a very sophisticated market with a lot of funds on the side line ready to be spent  which gets activated within an hour. 

If so, that analyzer is not sophisticated enough for you.

Get some good education before starting in this niche and buy a low valued NPN to start off, as there is no better way to learn than to do.Bottom line this is a business this is not passive investing .. much more too it.. and the level of sophistication of the investor/money has to be far greater than that of a simple landlord situation.. 

Sophisticated investors invest on cashflow where the rents exceed the mortgage plus expenses (and enough money to pay for professional property manage to do our dirty work).Sophisticated investors look at the Rent-to-Value Ratio and look for at least 1% or more to be able to cashflow after expenses.

How you track them could be scanned receipts in a folder and a spreadsheet or something more sophisticated but track them. 2.