And find a mentor, someone who's been successful in real estate investing over a 30 year track record so you know they've lived through several real estate market cycles and have succeeded and persevered over those cycles.  

I think timing the market is impossible and instead, I’ve chosen to consistently buy properties at various points in the cycle.

One may have a freezer stuck in "defrost" cycle.

Feel free to connect if we can help in any way or if you think you have a service that would be helpful to us.One Question regarding jackson, what is the cycle time to get a two bedroom rented there?    

At this point in the cycle here in CA (I'm just down the road from you), I would do the following with the real-estate portion of the overall portfolio:1.

Two questions:1) When does the typical lease cycle start for student rentals?

We are looking for the same thing now that we do at the top of the cycle and the bottom of every cycle.

We are currently fly in my first “down cycle” since I got into investment real estate 5 years ago… high prices, expensive money, etc.  

If you think that you (NY) is almost on the top of the cycle and you want to fix your profit - go for it and invest money in better cash flowing regions (my favorite is Kansas City Metro area :)   or just wait with cash for better prices in NY :)  there are a lot you could do with cash (buying property at actions is one of them). 

There may be some newer operators on a team, but overall the team should have a very strong track record of full-cycle deals.