Set a goal for yourself based on your needs, your location and your market and shoot for that.

Hi @Paul Baldwin,Thank you for your post and for considering a property from Five Stream Ventures!

It gets 10000X more appealing scrolling down, but because my sites are the top copied sites in the US, I am not going to show you this in public (sorry).These are the 3 steps to consider when starting with a website.Always, no matter what you do, you need to keep your target audience in mind! 

I don't know if theirs is too good to be true and actually I think the fact that they have the VA system set up to work on leads for you is a huge plus.

Right now, I’m considering a few areas:Fredericksburg, VARichmond, VAOxon Hill, MDGermantown, MDFor those of you who have experience investing in any of these spots, what’s the vibe like?

LLC offers better legal protection.3) Setting up in states that allow your identity to be hid is also overblown.

I WAS going to say you’d be setting yourself up for a large tax bill on that $200k, assuming investment.

If your property management company is good and has built an internal maintenance team which has set rates and had strong relationship relationships with licensed contractor which should keep costs in control, you should never need to shop contractors on your own I wouldn't think.So in short, our policy is give us your preferred contractors upfront if you have them, but then we work all tickets to resolution including dispatch, and payment of invoices.This is of course for operational expenses.  

Pretty sure they will have it covered in their PM contract.Their PM contract also probably allows them to set rental prices.

@Louis Hamilton,If a HELOC doesn’t work, you might consider these options:1.