Those of us who have owned SFH understand this intuitively.

You are so intuitive!

The best advice I can give you, and this is going to sound counter intuitive, is to dive in and roll the dice.

See below for a nice summary of the housing market over the last 5 recessions:Housing in previous recessionsIt’s somewhat counter-intuitive, but recessions don’t necessarily mean bad things for the housing market.

Counter intuitive, I know. 

I us dochub for contract signing and Intuit merch account with QuickBooks.

I prefer the software because it's intuitive, easy to use and not filled with a whole lot of bells and whistles that just get confusing after a while.

I do think that most people who own a couple multi-families have an intuitive understanding of what a cap rate does and doesn't say, even if they can't explain it very well in writing.

I understand that sounds counter-intuitive to lend when you're actually looking for financing. 

While, as us physicists are prone to say, it should intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that you paid something for the house and something to fix it up, I guess to some folks it might not be.