Kovacs IIIHi Lawrence,A Good Karma Goal deserves a Good Karma Answer, so here it is.Don't jump into the water without knowing how to swim.Since your goal is to make either bundles of money in chunks or a steady reliable yearly income you need to decide which one is "Your Best Bet" for achieving it.

Get a reliable QI to help you with your transaction.

@taneesha p.We need all of your analysis to provide reliable guidance.

Realtors hold the hands of a dozen or two people a year getting mortgages, they've seen the good, the bad, the ugly, and don't want you to be one of the latter two.Realtors tend to look at 1) communication, 2) reliability, 3) speed, and 4) rate/fees when looking at loan officers.

And, frankly, not really sure how to go about putting a good, reliable team together long distance.

That would be a reliable, objective resource before you get involved in something like this.

It is a good idea to consider an option which allows you to collect rent much quicker than those others but still provides other rental management tools you might find valuable (again, not to knock Cozy or these other tools like Tellus), but you can easily keep track of who paid what and on which date with a tool that is reliable and processes payments faster. 

I’m from the Akron Area and have a well trusted contractor that does very reliable work.

Are a lot of things that you cannot imagine that won't appear in someone who does averages it may or may not be reliable.

@Andrew Schrader I would assume the guy you are getting for $25 per snowfall will not come through and remain reliable for the whole season.