The following Saturday, I picked up The Book On Real Estate Investing.

first, treat the decision to buy a new home and the decision to rent the old one as separate. your first decision must be to determine if you should sell or rent the old home.

It's very rare to pick up any software program without having some type of manual to read or someone to teach you. 

Currently using “rentometer” to determine rental rates and scattered google results for average CAP rates for use in rental property calculators — any suggestions for better tools?

***PLAN*** Our plan is to continue reading books and researching and practicing analyzing deals over the next year while we are gone until we get back into the states and know which market to focus on.Should we stick with this plan or just pick a market and do long term investing to start out?

Fabricio KannenbergI am a believer that you pick where you want to live and then figure out how to play the real estate market where you live. 

A Wrap is where the owner is taking back a note for the sale amount which is greater than what they owe and has an interest rate determined between the buyer & seller.

You could probably pick up a dump for 25k cash or so and dump a bunch of sweat equity and long nights into it and make some good money or have your first rental.

If you pick a market that does not have any hope for an increase in population then you are limiting your market for potential renters.

The contract is what determines what happens in a default.