However, Northern Utah seems to me an extremely hot market right now, with deals closing before they can even hit the MLS.

So your tenant pool is extremely important if not the most important thing to look at when investing in NJ.

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.

Thank you, that is extremely helpful. 

It's extremely frustrating but perhaps/hopefully it has made me a better investor? 

They are just way too slow, unprofessional, and completely incompetent, and it is extremely hard to deal with them.

Right now there are definitely more units available than average, but they aren't staying on the market for extremely long.

Bob went to the extreme extent of actually using an alias of Bob Stevens instead of using his real name, Bob Prisco.We do not need to re-litigate the facts of his behavior and all of the other inconsistencies in his communications.

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.

You need to be extremely thorough with your scope of work, and unfortunately the sun porch was not salvageable, but fortunately the contractor helped knock it out of the park and the home looks amazing now!