In most areas you will be having to choose between cash flow and appreciation, or at least some give and take on two.That said, if you do NOT own a primary residence yet I'd highly suggest you secure something first. 

I'm also of the mind that a "loan partner" is better when this partner would not be having an active role in the project and does not bring any special knowledge or experience to the table.

The value behaves a bit like an SFR.

Then, since you are going to be working exclusively out of state, you are pretty much necessarily going to be having a property management company look after these for you I would assume.  

Two houses in 200 miles apart would behave differently if one market has downtrend supply and one has uptrend supply.- Since you're focusing on appreciation, this should be your key metricsI personally would invest more into less supply market in Class C property rather than Class A in uptrend supply market.  

Hello, I'm really sorry to hear about the troubles everyone seems to be having finding and keeping a good "handyman."

However the tenant will know they can't get their security deposit back and may behave accordingly. 

I guess I never did get a handle on how important a business plan could be. Have

They will likely be better behaved and take better care of the unit if they know.If its a MF and I'm in a different unit, I can see the benefit of being anonymous, but even then unless you are a total "hands off" LL and let a PM handle everything, then its hard to stay "hidden"

The question should be have you explored what areas you want to live.