So with respect to regulations I believe it is risky for a buy-and-hold investor.

I'm going to force myself to walk away from the computer now: I could easily burn up your whole day picking your brain if you let me, but I'll try to be respectful.

That is the first thing to establish.  

Have you established what your goal/s are?

Matthew Burns I'm not sure what 16% of mortgage means with respect to cash flow, but it appears your main motivation may be to avoid capital gains taxes IF the property has appreciated a lot.

You can't really do that here (well, absolutely not to East/West......you can go North/South in certain respects).  

Though there are a lot of things RE agents/rehabbers/wholesalers and etc do wrong in there respected fields not make the actual event wrong.

@David Hughes,You'll need to learn how to attract and engage private lenders to get into deals, and learn how to get into deals where you can get cash out as soon as the rehab / repair is done to establish a reserve.... among other topics, of course.

I work with investors too, so I charge a flat rate for under $50,000 and over that it's usually a %....Once you establish a relationship and close several deals, you can renegotiate....I pride myself on providing my clients with top notch service!!! 

@Justin Kovach - IMO one of the postings should be a document establishing that you are starting the five days of being unable to contact tenant, and you should photograph that posting; and when photographing a posting, it has been suggested to get the hard copy of the daily newspaper into the photo showing the date as well, to establish that you did not in any way falsify the date.