I'd love to hear pros and cons of Mexico destinations, particularly Tulum and Puerto Vallarta, or any other suggestions. 

For this particular deal, it has sat listed for sale for a long, long time now.

I have spent the past 12 months reading the forums, particularly on how to sharpen up my skills on crunching the numbers on potential deals, to mitigate the risk of making a poor investment decision.

Was wondering if the community would elaborate on how they procured their first deal and what considerations/lessons learned they came up with particularly on the finance side.

In my particular case raising the ceiling about 15 inches, removing chimney, installing new insulation and adding an Egress compliant window came to 9K. - Then, the most important thing is to determine if it worth it.

Property in this area has never risen in value, with the exception of SFHs in particular neighborhoods, so I doubt property value to go down much.

As @Matt "Roar" Gardner mentioned there are some good small groups, PIG group in particular.

I know a lot of this decision is based on personal variables, but I'm wondering whether there are any tell-tale signs that a specific property is better suited for one particular investment strategy. 

You may wish to confirm that the new 401k provider has experience with the particular investments in which you intend to invest your retirement funds as you very likely will have questions in terms of the mechanics (e.g. how do you invest in real estate, etc.).3.

@Moustafa Ahmed as far as I know NJ is particularly tenant friendly.