Get excellent credit. 

Building those "muscles" of being investor take time but don't be discouraged as everyone's ramp up time is different.If you are truly lost then perhaps the best use of your time might be in finding an excellent property manager to handle everything on your behalf for at least a year.

@Shaun Sanville, certainly an art versus a science, but I will often take the price per sq ft and use that, but then take a slight discount.  

My initial thought is to generate an excel doc to capture, organize, and automate this process, but hoping there are more sophisticated options available. 

I had no idea BP had all of those handy excel modeling tools uploaded by users.

Excellent point...Thank you for correcting my info, Anthony, and sorry to Casey for giving out bad info!

An activity is a personal service activity if it involves the performance of personal services in the fields of health (including veterinary services), law, engineering, architecture, accounting, actuarial science, performing arts, consulting, or any other trade or business in which capital is not a material income-producing factor. 7.

It's like trying to define art, we may not be able to, but we know it when we see it.

I think that's an excellent idea!

While I agree with Bill G. that Master Lease Options do not eliminate risk, I find them to be an EXCELLENT way to mitigate risk.