Agent and leasing experience can help with negotiation skills, market knowledge, and tenant screening.

Maybe get yourself a couple of SRFs to start, run them for a year or two and get some $$ profit AND (more importantly) experience.

In Berlin, rental arbitrage has been very profitable, with average annual margins of 25-40% after all costs but before taxes, so shifting to a market where arbitrage is barely breaking even is definitely a reality check.Given your experience, would you say the best way to enter the market now is through purchasing properties with financing?

When you have the confidence & experience branch out and do one yourself.

So, it's still NOT a good idea to try to invest by zip codes - which are too big in our opinion/experience.

I'm not sure about your partner here if he has the backing or experience as an engineer but my experience with engineers is they don't have practical real world experience like you have by doing projects all over the nation. 

Just based on my personal experiences in the industry for many years sometimes we ALL have to do work outs..

Hi Ralph, A big part of SEO of a site is content, emphasizing quality, keyword optimization and user experience.

(b) Is it okay to talk to multiple realtors at the same time (I'm thinking it would be better to have a separate realtor with lots of market knowledge and experience in each of the mentioned locations) or should I only plan to use one?

I actually had come across your post below in the Events forum and thought to myself it would have been nice to attend that to see first hand a local flip and talk shop about the process.https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/1215682-chec...I am happy to hear that someone with your experience in the region feels that Westchester is a market with some potential.