It's not so much being torn between cash flow and turnkey, but mostly the fact that I'm a police officer and there's certain areas where I don't want to be parking a police car overnight given recent events.

I spoke with a financial planner once & they just wanted me to buy life insurance for myself with it.

Check out meetup.com for some events and if me and a few other newbies in RVA get together in the near future to talk real estate we can let you know

A great way you can develop a wide network in the area is to go to local events.

You can find it in the Events under Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing - Philly.

I'd like to join REI meetup events here but haven't yet.Thanks again,

The best way to explaining this is for you to download an IRR calculator spreadsheet or build your own simple one and play around with one.For what its worth most deals I deem meeting minimal IRR standards is 13-15% but you have to dig a little deeper to uncover the real placements of cashflows and capitalization events... and then dig even deeper to verify the assumptions such as occupancy, rent increases per year, and what reversion cap rate was used.Again I don't look for IRR cause its manipulated a lot instead I look at total return on a 5 year basis.

In any event, thanks for the thorough response.

Should be a great event. 

Might be worth taking a look at.CarolI've been to their Ultimate Partnering event in Boston a few times.