It is the most popular software in the industry and all CPAs know how to navigate it which is nice.

Go to Etsy and search for "rental property tracker," and you will find hundreds of nice spreadsheets to track 10-20 rentals, usually for under $10.Software has extremely helpful features like online payments, marketing syndication (click a button, and your property is advertised on multiple sites), electronic document review/signing, maintenance tracking, and owner reports.

Appliances look nice until the pet hair destroys the fan on your nice stainless steel fridge and you are out another $1k+ to replace it... 

Once you have completed the consolidation portion of your 1031 exchange you now own a more expensive (and probably really nice) property that it must be your intent to hold for investment use. 

Nice to meet you.   

Another nice bonus of using this as a funding source is no closing costs, big help on the front end.Obviously, if all goes relatively well, the plan would be to hold these properties as rentals and refi at some point down the road when rates on mortgages drops back down a bit, whenever that may be.

Philly is a nice option, but you have to study the blocks for about a year to be sure you understand the area you are investing in.

Once you know the market, it's a nice gig. 

Hi, pre foreclosure in all of its permutations, before the bank sends Notice of Default (NOD) or efter which is state even county dependant but often starts a 4 week clock till the trustee auction are the 2nd most difficult deal scenario and IMHO only experienced investors should bother, the 1st most difficult deal scenario are bidding at the court house steps on lord only knows what is being auctioned off sometimes even 2nd mortgages, you need to do so much home work to attempt to reduce your risk at the court house steps...Pre foreclosure no one talks about these issues, always about the nice sounding stuff like "motivated seller" get a good deal etc etc both are usually not the case.- 95% of folks in pre or post NOD want to stay in their house, keep their house inspite of them 100% will loose the house at the auction. 

It would be nice to know the opinion of other experienced investors in Japan.