We want to leave our options open but also want to find what niche works for us.If anyone in the Birmingham area has any good deals they need to pass on let me know ;)I'm really loving this community and the support you all give is an amazing gift.

I may be contacting you soon to discuss the local markets and niches to get into.

When you're starting out, learning the business and crafting your niche, I would definitely invest where I'm living. 

Though technically, my four plex is a residential property, the fact that I pull, right now, nearly 50K in rents, makes it more valuable to investors. 

Since anything in there is technically non-taxable, do they allow depreciation to somehow lower your tax basis when you go to withdraw later on?

I think the general consensus was majority of jobs were lower paying warehouse jobs and not the high paying technical ones people typically associated with Amazon.

Is there a technical name for the umbrella policy and a good company to buy this insurance from?

The house is on a crawlspace, and so I really don't think the house itself would ever flood, seeing as the back half is technically out of the flood zone and its the same height off the ground as the front..

While technically the owner of the property if to maintain the deposit(in most states), many Property Managers have been burned by lawsuits when the owner fails to account for the deposit upon move out or more often foreclosures. 

You have to do some sort of value add or find some niche that is off the beaten path.