I am thinking about instructing my tenants to go to a local branch of a bank that I have the rent deposit account and deposit the rent directly.

Money orders work, you can give them an acct# and they just go to a branch and make the deposit manually as well.

However, I'd hate for this to happen to me in the future if I ever branch out to another market and get a different PM. 

They have my bank account number and either deposit it at the branch or automatically through their bank. 

I read all these rules of thumb and realize they do not apply at all for California real estate (specifically Greater Los Angeles).I find it frustrating that it seems the general opinion is to invest in your home state first and then branch out across borders however with the overinflation of real estate prices in my area I don't see it feasible to pay such a great deal of money for so little of a property/no cash flow especially since its not my objective to speculate on appreciation.So far from my reading and learning I have decided I would like to focus on SFR/Multi-family.

For any state, just google " Your state Judicial branch case lookup" for example "Texas Judicial Branch case look up".

Sue K. that's exactly why I'm looking at insurance to start a family friend owns a Farmers branch he has a couple people that are in there 3rd year making 6 figures so I know I could use a lot of that income to be directly applied to real estate, my debt to income ratio will also be helped by this.

I plan on speaking to my contact at my local bank branch to get info on financing options available to me.

Unless all parties lives in the same town or county, and / or you have unified county or state police, and everything took place within those corresponding boundaries, any police dept. is going to point the finger to another city's police department to deal with it - because it's a pain in the butt.example - the branch that issued the starter check is in town A, your rental is in town B, you received the check at your home in town C, written to your LLC which is registered with a registered agent in town D.  

Also, be sure to take pictures after storm to add to damage claim.In investing things happen I was in the middle of a flip, with the wood frame put up 2 days before a storm and a heavy tree branch fell and destroy back of home.