It was like paying for multiple Master's degrees to get our "real world" experience.  

Time overcomes low cash flow to some degree... rents go up while your mortgage stays the same and your tenant pays down your mortgage.  

Personally for what people charge for these programs I would say you are 1000x  better off taking some courses at a local college, getting a degree and working in real estate to get paid for experience and then do real estate on the side for your own portfolio as well.

Hail is the big culprit, tornadoes to a lesser degree. 

SF is too globally recognized and loved to go away in my opinion. 

PPR was like my real world masters degree in raising capital, marketing, real estate and note investing, small business and fund management.

I am a current Senior at Catholic University of America playing Baseball and finishing up ny accounting degree.

If you plan to use cash to finance your acquisition and rehab expenses, this will help minimize risk exposure to a certain degree.

If this is not something you're interested in delving into and learning to a high degree, then investing in publicly traded REITs would be another good option for you, which have historically returned about 13.5 per cent Per year over the past 50 years (1977-present), beating the US stock market by two per cent and even beating private real estate investing by 4 per cent (that's compared with the average real estate investor, not the experts here at Bigger Pockets).

With my LTRs I have been switching to all tenant paid utilities after my first winter where I discovered the majority of my tenants were setting the heat at 78 (which is unreasonable in Northern New Hampshire) and leaving their windows open in -20 degree weather.