@Bill J Fay Im definitely on board with you and will not use them anymore.

Insurances, contractors, realtors, off market properties, cold calling, etc all seemed so difficult....BUT...After 1 year, I've now completed multiple rehabs, have more properties in the pipeline, have investors on board, and all of those worries are now just day to day operations.

The little time I had with him I cherish and he is intensely missed every day.My primary career has been managing various claims from habitability to slip and fall (personal and commercial) workers comp to dog bite and private passenger auto/trucking with attorney involvement, so I’m not shy nor am I intimidated by these life sucking vampires, lol.

There are so many ways to make it happen in real estate and for one reason or another I got in few years ago when a Lyft passenger gave me this advice.

If shes onboard with your plan of taking out 50ish k mortgage and take the rest in cash then do that.

But I do believe that it is critical for REI success to have your spouse on board, at least for passive support. 

As a PM, I would be worried if a new owner did not ask me at least some of the following:- Company Specifics: first question should be are they licensed (how many properties do you manage, what type/class of properties do you manage, how many property managers on the team, how many years have they been in operation)- Pricing (what is the cost to manage the property (ies), is there a leasing fee (commission structure), is there an onboarding fee, is there an early termination cost, are there ad-hoc costs for maintenance, tenant screening, or miscellaneous costs - such as to appear in court if you have an eviction)- Service offerings (do you have a maintenance team, do you come equipped with a list of contractors/vendors, do you offer the software and portal access for tenants/owners, etc.)- Financial Services (you (owner) should think about what you want the PM to handle, if it is everything from paying bills to insurance procurement to P&L statements then ask that, if you don't want the PM so heavily involved in financials and just more on the surface level of the operations of the property then that is okay too!

VIRTUAL ASSISTANCE - I will have to onboard a virtual assistant and train them to handle a lot of the aspects (posting properties, signing leases, managing maintenance tickets, etc).

As a PM, I would be worried if a new owner did not ask me some of the following (even if the intention is to only keep me onboard for a short while):- How many properties do you manage?

Like most government programs, it did take time to get on board, but I feel like it wasn't too lengthy.