I will do my best to accurately gauge my numbers.

I align with his thought process and believe a majority of the things he says are accurate 

While I got my teeth kicked in a few times in the early going, that decision forced me to be very keen on how to accurately screen for good and bad tenants. 

One thing I'm not sure of is location in this case, I suppose I could either look in a well established area and expect equity to increase through remodeling or in a less desirable area that I'm gambling will attract more attention in the future.

Keep your paperwork, documentation, and monies accurately accounted for and  when it is time to distribute your cpa will be able to help.

I would get property tax returns from seller to accurately determine an expense trendline, and also make sure your ROI is including an adequate set-aside for reserves, especially for a property of that age.

What strategies are people using to track these accurately and with minimal headache with book keeping?

As a rule of thumb an accurate bid takes about 40 hrs of work and 10 site visits.

It looks like a few areas have access to more accurate data than others, esp Denver and Minneapolis-St Paul.One has to spend many hours on Zillow, Realtor.com, or any of the other sites to get a sense of what is accurate information and what is not.

Future DemandWhile no one can accurately predict the future, you can infer what a market is likely to do by looking at current and recent trends.