Nobody expects their retirement account to cash flow while they are working.

The last time I did an insurance MTR it involved my work truck, an alternating current generator, 150 feet of extension cord, a sawzall, an appliance dolly, my 14 foot trailer, a house with fire damage and a $3000 Samsung French door fridge.Don't expect to make any money without doing any work.

@Melissa FinneyEven if someone give you a referral, what meets their expectations, may not meet yours.In our experience, the #1 mistake owners make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.It's often a case of not doing enough research, as they don't know what they don't know!

If I invested in MF investment - you would not expect to take a depreciation deduction from my investment, would you?

@Daniel WindingstadRecommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.So, when investing in areas they don’t really know, investors should research the different property Class submarkets.

While cap ex is inevitable, there are certainly ways to prolong the life expectancy of major services such as scheduled filter changes, scheduled drain clearing, etc.

This takes away the unrealistic expectation to meet some made up metric.Flipping presents the perfect analogy: in any market either the front end or the back end is hard.

@Mateusz SkibaRecommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.

As I expected this is a very different market than where I live (in NY).

Looking for any insight as I originally expected only to be total out of pocket under 5k, thanks.