Items to consider:Yard maintenance - I normally have a clause in my lease that the tenant is responsible for yard maintenance on their respective plots.Water/sewer cost - Identify who is responsible and add/remove expense as needed.Owner occupied route - add in PMI (0.85% of loan amount per year if under 90% LTV) if paying less than 20% down and adjust interest rate as needed.Near Future capital expenditures - have inspections been performed?

We identified around 10 properties that we looked at and got down to 5 that we would be willing to bid on. 

Identify the homes of interest and then start calling (whether owner occupied or not).

The process itself is simple:Find properties Analyze them for potential based on picturesIf they are close to meeting your criteria, visit them and identify issues. 

If your goal is more long term and time is short, then starting with a distance investment single family or duplex can be a good move, as others have identified.

Massachusetts has lots of traffic and the patterns are predictable but you need to know them.

Since the property is the only security for the loan you should work with the title company who will search the title and identify if it is coulded in any way.

You need to identify what is required to a contractor focus on projects to work on.

A 1-star review isn't the end of the world, but if you see a pattern of hostile or arrogant responses from the PM company, well....A few questions to ask:1) Do you, or the owners of the PM company, own rental property?

I'm not an attorney, but here's what I would do:1) Identify what type of entity owns the properties.