I believe education is key to making informed decisions and I don't want any client to say "I never knew about that" when working with me.

I think hard money lending would be awesome, I am not at that point yet, but I have worked with several of hard money lenders and I know that if you do hard money lending that you will need a system and guidelines to guide your lending decisions along with enforceable legal documents in case things don’t go as planned you can foreclose and take back the property to recoup your investment.Turn key rentals managed by an honest turn key company could be a good avenue for you but you will need to vet the company and manage the manager.Buying performing notes is also more of a passive investment that could get you maybe an 8-9% return.

Think a list of qualifications that applies a weight to each trait:Credit Score - XPets - XIncome - XPrevious recommendations - XLength of proposed lease - XDeposits - XTransunion gives you a go- no go decision but the above may help you grade the quality of each potential tenant while being objective.   

When I was a tenant, my reasons for leaving various places was 1) moving to another area  2) moved in with b/f (now H)  3) bought a house.There was one additional time where I moved out because the unit was poorly maintained. 

Chicago (Cook and DuPage) has been getting crushed with property taxes due to poor government management.  

Best financial decision I made was to purchase buy a house. 5% down and now I have a lot of equity and the ability to leverage some of that equity. 

I'm also in the Phoenix area and was just about to go through the same decision.

Owning a home is a lifestyle decision that will draw heavily on your saving ability.

That being said, although you may now be able to have all of your accounts on auto-pay, at one time or another, I'm sure you've had to make the decision about what bill to pay and what bill not to pay in a given month.

But I tend to be very strict in following basic guidelines in my business decisions.