I guess I'm more of an analytical/planner type where I like to learn as much as I can about what I'm looking to get involved in and be able to outline a reasonable and feasible plan before diving in.It feels like to me, if we start with just one house, without a plan for how to get another one or two, then we will potentially shoot our load or prevent ourselves from other opportunities by not considering how to move forward. 

I currently work full time for a marketing agency, and specialize in search engine optimization, paid advertising, & analytics.

Vrbo has free analytics that show pricing and demand for any given date.Before Vrbo had this free data I created a spreadsheet and put in a hyperlink to 4 or 5 properties zi considered competitors.

Additionally, if you link your Google AdWords account to your Google Analytics you can identify potential negative keywords through filtering paid keywords by bounce rate.

As you can tell I’m passionate, analytic, and kind of a fireball (maybe crazy?).

I need the analytical data on what's happening at a unit level and the property/complex.

WE USE AN ANALYTIC TRACKING NUMBER THAT IS ASSIGNED TO THEM.

There will always be those that don’t but they likely would have found other paths to the same place by relying on something else.For me personally I am a newbie but practically live in excel doing analytics as a banker so I have not really used the calculators but I have seen similar ones sent to me or PDFs and I too see how it can be overwhelming and find it easier to find a very simple analysis in excel that I really have to think about but to each his own.  

A little bit about myself for anyone interested:I'm looking to be a buy-and-hold investor while continuing my regular job - I am looking to put money to work and would be potentially interested in doing so as part of someone else's deal; I would consider both SFR and MFR deals.I am an investor in my day job (currently private equity / buyouts, soon to become public equities) so may have some bad habits, or at least industry-specific ones, to break; I generally anticipate being relatively analytical / systematic in looking at dealsMy family held a few properties when I was growing up - I have experience personally doing refurbishing work and secondhand experience with property management activities (this will hopefully help me as contextual information, I don't anticipate taking on an active role in refurb or property management in the near future)Right now, I am trying to educate myself on the process of deal sourcing (MLS, wholesaler buyer lists, etc.) and market data sources; in particular, I would really appreciate any input on good sources for publicly available market-level data in manipulable format such as Excel or .csv as well as input from anyone who uses a systematic deal-screening approach both on their criteria and how they get reliable / quality data into a screening-friendly formatThanks for everything people have already contributed. 

Maybe I'm being over analytical, but I would, at the very least, match the appliances in color.I would sell the microwave and fridge, and replace them with black ones, just to give the kitchen some uniform.