We conduct quarterly pest control services at our rentals & so far, they are great!

Well, it is completely possible that you buy a house today at $500k, the inflation numbers for the next quarter come back bad (pretty likely), causing the fed to clamp down and raise rates again (pretty likely), causing demand in the market to dry up significantly (already happening; look at days on market and price reductions, or talk to any agent), causing the market to dip 15%. 

This will give you a high degree of confidence that future deals will likely meet your criteria in the next quarter or so. 2) Check out some of BiggerPockets' Investor Friendly Agents in your area as part of your process. 

That’s a notion put forward by people incapable of doing math, because a quarter-point increase to the average mortgage, which is $400,000, raises it by $60.”https://www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca/...

Here are some of my favorites:IRR's Annual "Commercial Real Estate Trends" ReportPWC's Annual "Emerging Trends in Real Estate" ReportCBRE's Biannual "North American Cap Rate Survey" ReportRCLCO's Quarterly "State of the Real Estate Market" ReportMarcus and Millichap's Annual "Multifamily Investment Forecast" ReportIf you search for those terms in Google, you can find and download each report.But you always want to perform your own analysis, looking at factors like unemployment, population and population age, job diversity, top employers, and supply and demand data (new construction, vacancy rates, median rental rate, etc.) 

Why should he give you equity in his quarter million dollar house for 5k?

Annualized maintenance would do the quarterly inspections, take care of all the needed seasonal maintenance, as well as provide a local handyman service to take care of any service issues.

Hey Dan, Perhaps consider having an onsite innkeeper, many motels have onsite managers quarters since they were often family run businesses'.

Houston for me:  Every quarter in 2020 was better than the one before it. 

Do you plan to travel back once a month or quarter to maintain and manage them yourself?