My job does require that I travel and I would like to spend more time with my family rather than maintaining the properties.

I plan on constructing the kitchen and baths with maintenance costs in mind to keep them simple, timeless and easily maintained.

.* Generally have higher gross rent yields (admittedly expenses can be higher due to common utilities and common area mainatenance, offset by economies of scale over time)Once I have 7 or 8 conventionally financed multis (mostly 2 and 3 BR units to avoid transients as much as possible, and to capture large Section 8 allotments), I plan to focus on SFRs for buy-and-hold, using local bank financing.Advantages of SFRs:* Greater rental demand, quicker tenant placement * Longer tenancies typically* Better resale options, including O/O buyers* Tenants pay all utilities, maintains yard* Can rent under lease-option if desired* Less concentration, more diversification* More liquid; if cash needed can sell one houseDoes this seem like a reasonable approach?

Maybe you should hire your VAs to create and maintain a system that creates a relationship with these Agents.

A single member LLC is usually eaisly defeated as most owners can't see themselves making out a minutes book authroizing themselves to go buy materials or make an offer on a property, but a well maintained entity would require these efforts as evidence that the LLC was actually a seperate entity from the owner/member.The more you treat your entity as a seperate being the better off you'll be in having it viewed that way.

But I think you will enjoy some of the soft benefits of having a retail and rental operation combined: depreciation, other tax benefits, economies of scale in remodeling, multiple exit strategies, volume to maintain agent relationships, etc.

It's sort of a "keep your enemies closer" thing...I have always worked to ensure that the HOA does not become one of those HOAs you read about in the paper...telling people that their house is the wrong shade of white or that their grass is a sixteenth of an inch too high.But, I do think HOAs serve some purpose with respect to maintaining aesthetics.

Typically they would at least maintain the building and common areas.

The number one issue that I see for new investors, like myself, is the ability to setup/run a real estate investment business on a part time basis while still maintaining a full time job.The question I have for everyone is...how do you do it?

Blue unemployment on left axis, and red 1995 indexed Silicon Valley home prices on right:If you look back to when we were leading up to the dot-com crash, you'll see that Silicon Valley maintained unemployment below 4% for almost an entire 5 years between 1996 and 2001.