I'm able to notice this more frequently because of being home more often these days.Gardner - I'm not sure if you have changed gardeners or changed what they should be doing on my side of the property, but they have not come inside the gate in ages.

If you want to know how much you paid Joe's Plumber's service to work on just 3 of the 8 properties in april and may of 2020, you can run that report in minutes. try doing that with excel (and im an excel nerd at heart). profit and loss statements, balance sheets, expense tracking by vendor, income from a particular tenant - these are all reports i easily run (and are automatically updated) on a frequent basis. as far as receipts, i have been using espensify to track receipts, and input everything into quickbooks (i have the desktop version). however, after consulting with other BP members, i am swapping to QB online this year, and i believe it has its own expense tracking app that seamlessly integrates. i use quickbooks payments to collect rent. it gives you the option to accept either EBT or credit cards from tenants, and you can turn one or the other off (i dont allow credit card payments). for EBT, its about $0.50 per transaction. for rent once a month, this fee is worth the convenience. there are other systems such as cozi that do this as well, i just chose QB. i also flip houses, and i use quickbooks for that as well. however, i do have a few spreadsheets i use for major rehabs as well, mainly to assist with project management. you could probably accomplish that in quickbooks as well, im just not that advanced. 

There are a couple of motels for sale in an area of FL that I visit frequently but I live in PA.

You generally have to go with a 8" mattress instead of the 12" that are frequently on sale.

I travel to Columbia, SC quite frequently for my W2 job and have frequented Georgia many times during my extended stays - strong market and great historical areas to support STR’s.Keep crushing it!

Your asking a nationwide or bigger audience about a somewhat local issue. 

., if the first floor used to be residential it might be easier to go “back”).Parking also frequently comes into play as the assumptions/requirements for store/office parking are usually a bit easier than for residential (depending on the nature of the business).You might be safer to assume you can put one big unit there rather than two smaller units, for purposes of your analysis.For cost, it really depends on what’s there (how much has to be removed before you can start building up).

Does this result in frequent insurance claims?

Banks or credit unions are often great options for stabilized properties because they offer attractive interest rates and fees, particularly for long-term holds.In addition, you can speak with realtors who specialize in the sale of investment properties, and they might have some good recommendations for financing.If you are attempting the "BRRRR" strategy, then you can still speak with some banks, but hard money/private lenders are also a frequently used option on the front-end (purchase +rehab).You can use the 'Network' tab on the BiggerPockets website to get an idea of some hard money lenders in your area, and much like getting references for traditional lenders, you can also speak with other real estate investors and/or realtors to see whom they might recommend.Hope this helps,Michael

These are important questions because it will tell you how frequently you will be doing repairs and how soon after buying you will have a major capital expense.