I am planning to build a portfolio dashboard for my properties in Excel, and I have a pretty good idea of what I want to see about them individually and combined. 

Still, my soft heart left my head feeling pretty rough, like a "failure".I don't think with your experience and 17(!)

Those are all pretty vague questions.

I live in Fl. where insurance is pretty costly but I am also investing in states where insurance seems less expensive.

It's real estate in markets with population growth, it's pretty hard to lose money if you get an inspection and appraisal."....Wishful thinking at best when buying C/D properties.

@Logan Lambert well my section 8 tenants that are currently in there are living pretty thugged out and I’m sure that when I need to recover the unit that it’s going to be significantly damaged due to the fact that I had an inspection done three months ago and wasn’t happy with the pictures I received.

We have zip codes that have lower and and higher end areas within the same zip so not a good marker to use.Going along with that a lot of the neighborhoods are very street by street or change pretty quickly by block, so you have to be aware of that.

I have heard of Kin and I believe their structure is pretty funky in terms of how they are capitalized.

If house-hacking is out of the question/you already own a primary at the very least, then that sounds like a pretty solid option/interest rate (although I might be able to beat that...).

I have a variety of contacts and I'm pretty sure I can get in touch with destressed property owners long before auction day (years before auction day actually).