I'll just say that nothing is going to teach you more in this space than practical experience.

Also, you could also hang out at some local ice rinks where people take their kids to hockey practice!

We do long-term rentals and practice BRRRR on every deal. 

These are features like online renter payments, tenant portal (for payments and work orders), help keeping track of work orders, tax reporting features, and accounting functionality.

Find Brandon's videos on YouTube for the "four square" method of analyzing homes and practice.

Go to Etsy and search for "rental property tracker," and you will find hundreds of nice spreadsheets to track 10-20 rentals, usually for under $10.Software has extremely helpful features like online payments, marketing syndication (click a button, and your property is advertised on multiple sites), electronic document review/signing, maintenance tracking, and owner reports.

Here's a list of things to track:- Formal lease application- Formal signed and executed lease specific to your state- Payment history (I recommend using online rent collection like Apartments.com, RentRedi, etc)- Maintenance requests and receipts- Accounting for all rental-related expenses (repairs, utilities, etc) The more you treat it like a business, the more helpful you are to your CPA come tax time. 

As a six figure earner, I am seeking advice and insights from experienced real estate investors on strategies and best practices that were valuable when starting out!

You can also check their reviews online at Google, Facebook, or Yelp.

Quote from @Diana Teng: Hi all,I think my question above is pretty direct.I'm interested to buy my first rental property, and after doing a brief search I see that there are quite a number of places out-of-state (I live in NY state)  that offer affordable homes that deem to be in hot market areas right now (according to many different articles online).