It’s a tax office, so I suspect they might be waiting to see how their business performs and the impact of technology before deciding.Thanks in advance for any advice or insights you can offer!

. - Fortunately, our transparent systems allowed the owner to catch it:)- Full transparency - we would have never caught this honest mistake:(An owner also needs to be involved to approve & fund large expenses: maintenance, property tax & insurance payments (if they want to be more hands off), evictions, etc.A great PMC should also have a chat with you annually about your future plans for a property and your portfolio. 

Immediately, I performed a Roth conversion, and instead of paying taxes on $50K I'm paying taxes only on $21K.

Sometimes it can be difficult to collect and some landlords will keep any unpaid utilities out of the security deposit, though CA is one of the trickier states to do this in.

Plus it makes bookkeeping and doing taxes etc. more complicated and annoying/ expensive.

I imagine I can get his wages garnished or maybe collect from his tax return.  

Before you close, can the rent from your buddy and the midterm tenant cover your mortgage, taxes, insurance, plus a bit extra?

To make a new property cash flow with current prices, interest rates, taxes, and insurance, you're putting at least 40-50% down.

Main question in other countries is ownership and taxes.  

The only part that Property 1 pays on that loan is the escrow for property tax & insurance for Property 1.Thank you for your insight.You need to look at purchase price to determine cost basis, not how you financed the purchase.