Verify credit, employment, etc for you. 6) I would definitely want noise (quiet hours), guests, and treatment of common areas covered. 7) We've used Rent Manager as it focuses more on the financials which I think is super important.

Staying local and house hacking—especially now, before kids—gives you so much flexibility to set yourselves up for long-term success.Your financial foundation is super strong, and house hacking a quad sounds like an amazing first step for you two.

Do you have the financial strength to hold/carry these lots if they don't sell quickly? 

@Kris Lou Be careful with agents as 95%+ of them really only know how to handle owner-occupied transactions.We don't do biz in Indianapolis, so this is unbiased info we hope you find useful:Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?

Looking forward to building a better financial future.

Sad, as I am sure I would like the views and the area, but it makes perfect sense practically, financially, and legally.Just curious but what color is the sky in your world John? 

However, sometimes investing is more than just the financial return.  

This may help with getting your parents to have more confidence in you financially. 

If you hire a PM, your financial account structure can be simpler.If you plan to continue purchasing rentals, I like some key accounts at the "management" level (income, opex, tax, owncp, reserve) and only have 1 checking account per property to prevent having 100 accounts and unnecessary complexity.

There’d need to be a lot of rehab work/managing that would require you to put in that many hours.From a financial perspective, it seems like the highest leverage way to keep buying more properties is leveraging your W-2’s and then being work optional.