Then target markets that have those types of returns.If you are giving your local PM management duties, then is there a reason to keep the tasks of marketing, payment, and repairs instead of allowing your PM to handle those? 

Many investors view the bookkeeping as a tedious extra task that gets in the way of them analyzing new deals or managing their current ones which certainly can be the case.

On the buy side, I seek out real estate agents that will listen to my specific requirements and then stay laser-focused on the assigned task.

As far as systems go I'm learning more about landing off-market deals with buyers.What I'm afraid of is when the downturn gets worse the government will once again pause evictions and/or will implement some bonehead anti-business agenda that unfairly harms landlords. 

I would suggest by the end of the year that you setup a bookkeeper so you can focus on those tasks of dollar productivity (i.e. finding deals, getting contractors going etc.)For the bookkeeping on the active real estate agent portion of my business (this is within a S-Corp), I use a bookkeeper, and am leaning towards bring in a level up from that in the next 6 months.

Life has pretty well done its best to demotivate, slow down and keep me off task.

I try to do this every December, so make your task today to setup a calendar reminder for Nov/Dec. 

They would have the mundane task of flushing every toilet, checking every cabinet door, checking every knob on every cabinet door, checking the AC filters, going through the cooking pots and pans and dinnerware to make sure everything is there.  

If you start with multi units you now get to deal with multiple maintenance issues at once, multiple accounting tasks by unit, multiple drama problems, i.e., tenants not getting along.

We have just transitioned about 50% of our regular tasks to VA's!