Michael your asking the right questions and its smart of you to approach your relationship with a broker pragmatically.

What device are you using?

Smart for them for using automated systems, but aggravating for the person who gets all the messages.Any time an ad goes up for a property in an area they're buying in, an automated text, e-mail, or robo-call comes to me.  

This can also be monitored from a smart phone or a laptop in real time panel by panel

I also wasn't very smart about this due to it being my first property and I didn't take deprecation on the property while I was renting it. 3.

I'm currently a financial analyst for a large medical devices company looking to supplement some extra income on the side through the power of real estate in order to eventually go into it full time.

You guys are being smart to even consider downsizing.

Normally it takes more than 6 years for smart people to forget tough lessons, but not this time...on the bright side, when the market collapses again in a couple years, journalists will have an easy job -- they can just take all the articles written about the financial crisis in 2008-2010 and search-and-replace "Bear Stearns" with "Blackstone" and "Deutsche Bank".

Talk to your CPA.Also some lenders are smart enough to realize you depreciation is a paper loss and count more income but again that is lender dependent.

So depending on who is at the other end of the money you are lending if they are smart they will try to be out from under you as soon as possible.