Martin  I used to drink Woodford exclusively and then a buddy of mine who owned a bar sat me down to try Old Forester a couple of times and I made the switch.

Full disclosure I’ve only recently acquired a few properties so I don’t have years of experience I just know that when I was making my decisions on where to invest I did use that site, but not exclusively. 

Could also be things like a new laptop if the laptop is used exclusively to conduct business on your rental properties (make the laptop or other assets $2,500 or less to avoid depreciation over multiple years). 

That way they can take advantage of the $500k personal residence exclusion.

I've worked exclusively with builders on for-sale subdivisions throughout Southern CA for the past ~20 years (thousands of new homes) and cannot think of a single time one of my builder-clients has retraded on price after a third-party inspector toured on behalf of a buyer.

But, excel is totally fine in the beginning (in addition to your PM software to capture transactions outside of the properties).We use QuickBooks Online exclusively for all of our REI Clients.

Brown I don't think rentredi and property manager is mutually exclusive.

In addition, if you are self-employed with no full-time employees you may wish to consider opening a Solo 401k instead of a self-directed IRA as it has several advantages over an IRA LLCsuch as much higher contribution limits, direct checkbook control (i.e. no need to have the account at a speciality trust company), ability to take a 401k loan, exclusion from unrelated debt finance income tax with respect to investment in real estate acquired with non-recourse financing, etc.

@Nick Zupec  the background check is transunion ,  I believe anyone using transunion has these exclusions. 

Do you require the tenants to have renters insurance AND do you make sure the renters policy does not have a dog bite / dog breed exclusion?