However, this site thrives on interactions and as such we encourage two way exchanges and look forward to educational and thought provoking ideas relevant to REI.

QuickBooks can be customized to fit any Industry.

A few particulars that may be relevant:1) I will not be occupying any of these units.2) I have enough cash to go up to 50% down on any of the places I'm currently considering, though I'd prefer to stick to a 20-30% downpayment.3) I have excellent credit. 

The goal of a vacation rental is to provide great customer service while maximizing your return.

3) I work for a high end custom home builder and I have only been working here for 10 weeks.

I'm still confused by how learning local real estate law, contracts, customs, etc can be considered a negative before embarking in...well...real estate?

Granted, not all of these are going to be relevant to you but I'd bet at least a few thousand will be.

I'm pretty sure someone has asked this in the forums before, but I couldn't find it in my search (I think it's just because I couldn't come up with any relevant key phrase to search on).I recently opened a business bank account with Chase, but their checkbooks are so expensive.  

Either way, easiest thing you can do to find out who your dealing with is to ask for the last three customers that hired him specifically (not the company).

I have no relevant experience in real estate and want to get to the point where I see a property and can say, this is worth X if you fix A, B, and C (basically ARV).It got me thinking, why not go for an Appraiser Trainee license.