So by the time the contract with the tenants expired and we came back to check on the house, we found out that our furniture was moved to the garage, beds and all, pieces were missing so we cannot put them back together, 2 sofas are ripped off by the tenants dog, and on top of all, the management company is charging us for the water and electric bill and reconnecting fee for a month because they had to reconnect it when they had a cleaning company come and "clean" the house.

On the other hand, I think I could get a higher rent by adding a few key pieces to make the place look even nicer.

I believe we have most of our pieces put together with the exception of locating the right deal. 

Title insurance is your piece of mind, knowing that if something were to come up after you close like a mechanics lien etc, you wouldn't be liable.

What are some pieces of advice  you would give to someone just starting out and also a question here.

For us it runs around $350 for the year but it's a piece of mind and if anything should happen, they will come immediately and fix the issue. 

So, I never really wrote a followup piece, but I probably should do that!

Hi Kelly,The first step is assessing where you both are currently at financially and experience wise and where you want to go.You might want the money for a long term rental hold and the investor might want to do a hard money loan for a flip to make points and fees so they can get the money back out and grow it again.There are some investors who want cash flow and others who want fast growth churning the money over and over with  a value add project or loans etc.I have found the numbers are important but the missing piece I see over and over is the investor more than anything wants the relationship and to have the trust there with their capital.With both of you being inexperienced you definitely need an attorney helping with docs and what the possible structures might look like.

I read BP for several hours every day (broken up in pieces, but smartphones are a beautiful, terrible thing), and I regularly see people listing "freedom of my time" as one of their big motivations when it comes to RE investing.

***I'll concede that if the property is a piece of junk and 30% of gross rentals are going to repairs than obviously the Cap Rate in a lot of instances is mis-stated.