During that time, I've also perused the forums picking up tips and information from the community that I believe have been pretty useful thus far. 

This is something my loan officer should have picked up from the inspection so I could negotiate pending an issue, but they didn't, which goes back to my first point. 

As far as books, after having read a lot of them over the past couple of years here's what I would suggest. 1) Start with personal development books 2) Next move on to business books 3) From there pick up some real estate books.

. :)   I have no doubt you'll pick up tons of info on BP.  

So on the podcast they suggest taking a experienced investor to lunch and picking their brain a bit.

Also your monthly expenses are greater as you must cover all utilities and tv and internet services.  

renter keeps complaining that repairs are not taking care of. yet won't accept calls from the repair guys and he picks fights with everyone repeatedly so the repairs don't get done. 

He was nice enough not to pick their things up and place them outside.

I am looking to pick from 3 or 4 mid sized markets in order to test the waters. 

If you only look at structure, you might be tempted to pick the one with higher splits.