@John Voychick I'm so sorry to hear about your experience, it really pains me to hear about people getting subpar treatment and customer service I always listen to people's experiences to make sure that I can prevent these kinds of things from happening to my clients.

The tips on finding deals, analyzing properties, and studying the market are invaluable, and I'll start practicing the "four square" method as you recommended.Thank you for the encouragement to jump in and get started.

@Stacey OlsonRecommend 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.

I highly encourage all my tenants to keep open communication with me about any struggles to pay rent, and generally they do.

This doesn't come cheap--these folks were making high six to seven figures depending on volume.We focused on lending to professional real estate investors--so our customers were frequent repeat borrowers. 

It is standard practice and component level depreciation is encouraged by the IRS.Though it is very important to track you time as you go along.

Need to understand customer traffic flow, neighbors, street access.Since you already own a location and know the market. 

I would encourage the use of a warranty deed to the situation that @Steve Vaughan mentioned above.

Hi Kevin, I would encourage you to maybe consider outside of New York in the future. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recommend 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.