Just had a quarterly Bank advisory meeting for small towns and areas  All technical people are Harding to get.  

Learn the area, meet other investors at meet-ups and one-on-one conversations, and once you feel more confident, you can make a purchase to live in. 

@Kevin Bartel happy to meet up for a drink!

You will get plenty of that at your office sales meetings, office training, CE training, board and association training.   

Your specific variable expense assumptions are wrong, BUT you stumbled into them being correct overall.Also, you are approaching this correctly - entering in the numbers to generate a purchase price that meets your metrics:)

There are 7 tests to determine if you materially participate (only need to meet one) the most commonly used tests are:1.

The mayor has been hot on out of state investors and poor property managers since his campaign. 

What else I learned was even if you have friends in the area, or even family, while they say no problem, as we get older we all value our time and it doesn't always feel right asking them to do stuff without compensation or with, but it is always tricky to work that relationship when they don't meet your expectations. 

To avoid going through the same poor experience, keep reading.Even if someone gives you a referral here, do NOT make the mistake of assuming that the PMC will meet your expectations, just because they met the expectations of the referral source.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!

There are snakes under the hot tub.3.