I look forward to hearing from you guys (especially the accountants!)

They can't even offer you a checking account or car loan at all, so they must be good for something, and that 'something' is purchase mortgages and cash out refinances. 

Using this approach, keeping withconservative rent growth and vacancy assumptions, and factoring in the fully matured real estate tax amount post-abatement, the Y1 projected cash flow of $570,561 ($670,561adjusted down $100,000 to account for the fully matured RE taxes) would value the asset at roughly $11.4M at a 5% cap - a substantial savings from our purchase price of$9.8M.

Deep down, the real answer is that she doesn't want to dip into her funds now if she doesn't have to; rather give up some of the profit than going out-of-pocket.The money is to be deposited to an escrow account, held by a title company that has been in business for a long time, so that offers some assurance.

I would recommend developing a strategy and location, and probably even organizing financing before you find an agent, because until you have all that figured out most agents won't be able to help very much because to them you would not appear as a serious buyer/ investor on paper.

I have a few beginner questions.Should I set up a separate bank account and run all income/expenses completely separate from my personal finances?

Bank when opening account).

Maybe, but this argument is short sighted and doesn’t take into account risk.Despite what most people on here say, REI is one of the more risky investment vehicles as compared to say stocks or bonds (don’t hate me, I love REI too, I just do both).

As a rookie investor I didn't account for those in my numbers - luckily the numbers still worked out.

Make sure you account for holding costs and you will probably have to go with an FHA 203k, also be aware the farther in the future your sell date is, the harder it is to predict value at that time.