I am initially looking into Northern Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess Counties in NY and then expanding into Western Connecticut (which is geographically near-by) and Arizona (where we plan to have a second/retirement home) as well as other attractive markets.

The how-to's aren't descriptive enough and don't cover all the tasks and problems you may come across.There is an identity verification process for landlords and owners must go through before being able to .

Your description and overview of the area is terrific, even today.

As for the virtual assistant, let me PM you to get the job description details.

In addition, the new post puts all actions needed to rent abandoned RE into a sympathetic description of a group of neighbors working together to care for the apparently abandoned home of former neighbor.

Your realtor is going to write some lame description about 'just needs a little TLC' and 'great bones' and all that, and predictably, he/she will get smashed with lowball offers from wholesalers of all shapes and sizes (good ones and frauds), as well as from investors (fewer in number).

You can find it at moneychimp.com, (I'm in no way affiliated) I included the websites description because I think it does a better job than I did of explaining the average return fallacy. 

Am afraid your lease was not descriptive enough and may have a tough time in court.Take this as a lessons learned and start working on improving your lease from the things you are seeing with current tenants and then wait it out if you can, which you seem to indicate you can do.Even with a very tight lease, I paid close to $3000 in evictions not to mention the heartache from tenants that I inherited on my first duplex purchase where I lived on one side and rented the other.I will never again inherit tenants.These ones moved in an extra person a year and a half in, despite lease saying not to, smoked marijuana and cigarettes in house despite lease saying not to and worse, I lived on property so they became very sneaky about how they broke their lease and these was just a nightmare.I hate evictions, but I equally hate bad tenants and tenants that I have not personally screened and that is why I refuse to take on tenants at property purchase.I also always, always do unit inspections.I just did one yesterday and glad I did, which I had initially decided I would not do, but nope, get in there and see how your property is being maintained.My fairly new tenant seems to have an issue with basic housekeeping.There was a smell in the unit, which I still cannot figure out what it is, but brought it to their attention and will be following up, he has a car that leaks oil endlessly on my newly resurfaced concrete driveway and garage flow, has a ring in toilet bowl that is also stained and smelling toilet from lack of cleaning.It pains me to see a unit that I took great care of when I lived in it to see what it is quickly turning into but I am nipping that in the butt right now.Dirty tenants can be a liability to any landlord, but overall tenants will try to test you and see just how vigilant you are and how much they can get away with.I also make notes on what I want to update on my next lease when I run into issues.Pets?

Since you're already confronted with going out of state, why set arbitrary geographic restrictions on what markets you will consider?

I have one bedrooms in midtown renting for $975, just to give you a geographic comparison of how sac rent rates vary by area.It has been fun to run numbers and hope it helps you make an informed decision.TaylorThank you for your input Taylor.