Also, my business partner and I are in different states, so having a cloud based system like Buildium is more practical for us.

(this is usually NOT the best course of action)All the attorney will do is hire a collection company that has more bark than bite and rarely collects any money.The other option is to use a judgement recovery company.They usually pay the court costs and filing fees and then split 50/50 of whatever they recover.Sometimes they will buy the judgement outright for real cheap.In this case you get your cash right away and move on.Judgements depending on the smarts of the tenant can take 3 months to years to collect.Some tenants are judgement proof.This can happen when:1.The funds are retirement funds in a bank or social security where money can't be taken.2.The tenant works a job where their income is at a level where they cannot be garnished by Federal Law.Even when you can garnish you can only take 25% each time.If their are other judgements already garnishing then the 25% gets split up among the garnishments.85% of judgements never collect a dime because of the work involved.Even if the judgement company you employ chases the tenants for money the tenant may pay or they might just file BK if they have other debts.A chapter 7 costs thousands so it would depend on their other total debts and how much your judgement is for.This is why it is important to carefully screen tenants.They need to have good credit,a good job with long work history,etc. or something where you know you can collect if they default.If you have multiple tenants staying in one place and they all make minimum wage it will be hard to collect on them later versus one person showing great income.Hope it helps.

Regarding 50% and 2% rules, they are great rules of thumb that I did use and considering I have the property and complete rehab with new mechanicals systems for less than 24K (cash), I can say I fit comfortably within the "rules" criteria.

Plumbing, septic systems increase the sq.ft. cost.It's a great concept.

Collin, You're going to want to go through the property and make sure all the mechanical systems, foundation, roof, etc. are all in good working order.

Oh, I forgot Dropbox which gives me access to my entire real estate filing system all the time!

He had his VA do this very thing for a person in the audience and by the end of the talk (pitch to sell his very expensive VA services and automated systems) the VA had made a post and created a blog on his own website for him within the hour, the entire audience clapped and cheered as if it was so amazing.I had a good laugh at least and drank beers with some good investor fiends afterwards, so at least it was not a total waste of my time.

I did not use an iPad, just emailed them the document through the EchoSign system, and got back a signed pdf a few minutes later.

Do you guys think that uploading a personal profile image (avatar) should be a pre-requisite for participating on the forums, blog system, properties directory, etc. here at BiggerPockets?

In my area it doesn't cost anything to put a rental in the MLS - beyond what agents already pay to have use of the system.