Bigger pockets has some good books, I'd pick up J Scott's book on estimating rehab, and his flipping book is useful, even if you don't plan on flipping. 

Disagree.The purpose of a background check is to determine risk.

The age and condition of the home usually determines how much money you want to put aside for capex each month. 

I'm going to be a bit of a contrarian to the above posters, but let me first qualify my post by stating that your market will determine what you should do.We frequently install en-suite laundry in our units - in fact, we have removed common coin-op laundry in most buildings of 6-units or less in favour of en-suite laundry - for the following reasons:electricity and, in most cases, hot water costs are transferred to the tenant;where water is sub-metered, water costs are transferred to the tenant;high-efficency residential laundry machines are about half the capital costs of commercial coin-operated machines;we can command $30 - $50/month in additional rent with en-suite laundry;by installing our own machines, we know they are installed property, with catch/drain pans and {going forward} leak detect shutoffs; andwith en-suite laundry vandalism of laundry machines has been non-existant ... and if a machine is damaged, we know who is responsible.We have a good rapport with a couple of local appliance suppliers and get called whenever they have "dinged and scratched" units to unload ... a small, cosmetic dent in the side of a washer - which will never be seen when it is installed in a laundry closet - can be worth a 40 - 50% discount.  

So for me, while cash flow is important, especially to show banks that the properties are profitable in order to get loans on them, I think that an investor should look at the investment as a whole and not just invest solely for cash flow.I would love to get the opinion of the BiggerPockets community on how important cash flow is to them in determining which properties to invest in.

School is out Friday, so I will be able to pick my son up Thursday. 

Then they picked what they wanted, and I had to hire the rest hauled off.   

The amount of my deposit is determined by the level of risk.

Did you all pick a niche right from the beginning or was it a learning process?

Learn your marketWhen you're driving around the neighborhoods you've picked, take the time to learn the market.