Proper Budget planning (and understanding) is critical to keep an HOA on the right track.Generally speaking, your Board of Directors is responsible for properly maintaining and operating Associations.

I would stick to an area that has a long history of tourism being a critical component of the economy.

I suppose that it's not critical to cash flow, but I don't want to be losing much money in the short term either. 

rental business is a business's you must look at bottom line numbers.and each market will dictate how much you can pay for capital.in a market like Michealas were she can buy a sub 20k house and rent it for 800 bucks.you can pay HUGE interest rate and still make good moneyIf your paying 400k for a property that brings in 2500 a month then interest rate is a critical component. you need to do the math

I’m a buy & hold investor, and have no experience wholesaling, so take my advice with a grain of salt.What I will say, focusing on learning & education starting out is critical.

Utilize the FHA loan, put little money down, and keep the rest of the capital you have to either invest in the property for strategic reasons and/or have liquid in the bank for your next opportunity, while you live at a discount or for free on the hack.For your expenses, understanding the basics on a rental is a good start(vacancy, maintenance, capex, PM, insurance, taxes, etc), but with it being a small multi-family, knowing your utility situation is going to be critical.

As I am still a newbie investor, I am starting to understand critical qualities of a lender.

We don't have a lease renewal fee at our property management company, and we're already doing inspections throughout the year, so we do not do a specific inspection during a lease renewal unless we have an area of concern @Ann B.Before offering a lease renewal it's critical to do market research to make sure your rent increase is on par for the market.

The most effective way to determine the time needed to execute these functions is to run a critical path analysis that lays the tasks out along with the parties that will be employed to do them and the processing time needed for the consultants you will engage and the city/town/county process they will be subjected to.The critical path will inform you as to which due diligence functions are sequential in nature and or which ones can or should be run in tandem.

You are going to put 3.5% down, and then no one talks about the part where you have to create 21.5% more equity to refinance out of FHA into Conventional so that you can use FHA again and not get stuck.The exit strategy is critically important, before you even ink that purchase contract.