It's hard to picture it turning around, regardless of the number of properties I accumulate.

Long story short, the dad passed away, the mom moved on, and my friend stayed awhile but had personal issues and had to move away.

However, had they tried to leverage during the recession, they would have gotten significantly less.This is the issue of appraised valuation- it means nothing until money is transacted.Your rate of return is directly correlated to the cost of your purchase and your overhead. 

I've used both and have not had any issues with either and they both wear the same.

I also added some additional comps that had the issue I described above.

Light is really an issue. if you match what is the going trend that is part of it but you need to see it in your space. 

Your bookkeeping system can tag income and expenses with a property ID or use subaccounts to keep track of income and expenses by property.Since you are a sole proprietor, there is no issue with co-mingling funds and using the same checking account for both personal and rental activities, but, it is much simpler for record keeping to have a separate checking/savings account for the rentals.I have charged stuff on my personal credit card for my rental properties, because I get "rewards" for my charges.  

It's completely normal for a title company about to issue a title insurance policy to discover something during their due diligence, that you didn't see when you pulled a title report for the exact same property from the exact same title company. 

We have reasons to be a C corp (foreign investors etc).I've been looking to get into real-estate investments for a while and have had issues with initial funding.  

I could see that being an issue.