and rent the house by January 1st.Assuming your tenants pay AND leave the house in excellent condition, you may find yourself with a security deposit in your pocket you can bank for future repairs.On a final note, and you may know this but for the benefit of other new investors,  using the judicial system should be a last resort. 

On the single out of state home, we have an excellent PM.  

Excellent product and even better support and educational material

We only give the tenant a copy of the written record, not a copy of the photographic record.

Again, thank you for the excellent information.  

Currently, I use Excel spread sheets SMS and GMail for tracking, and a folder structure in Windows for archiving documents along with DropBox for sharing, and QuickBooks for accounting.Ultimately, I selected Buildium as the best fit, with Rentec as a close 2nd and possible alternative if necessary.  

@Elizabeth Colegrove:"Where we are there have been a ton of short sales and foreclosures because of the circumstances in the area and bank".Excellent point, but the "economic"climate of an area affects both renters and buyers especially if they work in similar industries and have access to the same pool of jobs.

I'm completely novice to Excel/Spreadsheeting, so as step-by-step as you knowledgeable folks can get would be appreciated!

I don't have much equity in it right now anyway.Here is a link to my folder with the excel spread sheet.https://www.dropbox.com/s/nk2s5uxrlq4qnce/spring%20valley%204plex.xlsx

Id pay back the 50k owed, and use the 20-25k equity to completely pay the 21k into the "flip" i paid cash for (i have a comfortable cash cushion)and pay out of pocket for renovation (in cash), live there for 2 years, profit 50k and roll that (tax free) into a new home, with excellent schools, outside the city,where we really want to lI've.