Management fees are steep, you're competing w/ bigger operators as well as mom & pop places - it's hard to get the personalized care needed, in my opinion, to be successful. 

And who is taking care of the landscaping/snow removal? 

Conventional financing. 5% down.

You're learning about the eviction process, tenant screening (never "word of mouth" again), the power of a lease WHEN not IF a neutral third party needs to be involved, tenant/landlord laws, and managing tenants who don't care about your business the way you do. 

Staff often seemed to focus on one requirement at a time, and only moving on to others as each was taken care of, instead of starting them all at the same time.

It is clearly possible to do well here, but as expats I believe you need to be extremely careful in entering the market.

Hope this helps for now, and great to hear you are paying attention to your hard earned retirement funds with such care and discipline! 

CAREFUL !!!

This is one of the things that @Matthew Irish-Jones mentioned above - be careful about putting #3 on his list above #1 and #2.

I care most about the Internal Rate of Return (helps me determine how long to hold a property), the cash on cash return (helps me decide why this investment vs other options, and it also takes into consideration appreciation of the property!)