For me it boils down to more of a personal decision - can I afford two homes, do I want to have two homes and the stress of it, or just take my money out of one and put it in another.

The other factor that's relevant for me is that my husband is a high end W-2 wage earner and we could greatly benefit from the potential tax benefits of actively managing the property. 

For me it's family, friends, and the food.

There's other items such as this where it may be helpful to talk to a CPA/EA for a little tax planning, especially since you'll likely get caught up in the passive activity loss limitations if taking bonus on a single rental property as I often see.It's also useful to mention that even if you do the cost seg study (I'm assuming you're doing one to be talking about this), you'll still benefit from accelerated depreciation in the form of shorter useful lives on the assets where you received bonus from.

I have always preferred to stay in the areas I know and that are within a reasonable driving distance for me 90ish minutes from my home.

Some lenders are individual investors; some lenders are syndicates or have joined individual investors together to form a lending institution.

On these very forums you hear countless stories of "I lost 5K and can't pay for me medical expenses".

Generally speaking, with SFR or small multis, I just rely on the lease/rent roll (and some form of proof of payment; i.e. bank statements, deposit receipts, tax returns, etc.). 

Relatively small amounts of interest income ($1600+ per year) is the highest taxed form of income I have found if you have kids at home.After earning a few grand in interest, It takes away my child tax credits and gives me an effective tax rate of 70%.   

I do it myself and takes 20 to 30 minutes a month (did it yesterday for Dec), with about 7 of those minutes for 1 property in Blount County, TN which requires the form to be manually filled out, write a check, address an envelope, scan doc and check for my records and walk it to my mailbox.