They put a fire pit in the back yard and rocking chairs on the front porch and regular invite their friends over to socialize.The last four properties we purchased from the estate of an investor.  

Dan This may not be a popular opinion, especially because a number of people on these boards are agents who rely on real estate sales to earn a living, but I wouldn’t buy any real estate right now.The stock market is way way way down and if you look at historical charts of the stock market, whenever it’s way way way down, it almost always doubles or triples within the next few years.Unless you think that Apple and Google and Netflix and Amazon are going out of business (hint: they aren’t), then you realize that the stock market will bounce back over the next few years with tremendous furyI was sitting on a bunch of cash that I was going To use to buy my next vacation rental, but instead I am dumping it all into the stock market so that it doubles or triples over the next few years and then I will take that huge amount of cash and buy a bunch more vacation homesRight now I wouldn’t buy real estate unless I found something that is way way way way way down in value, like 50% down,.

Feel free to shop around, but rocket mortgage is a very popular option with many buyers.

From that info you can figure what it would take to replace those items (sheet rock, paint, cabinets, fixtures, etc. might be your responsibility)

Unless you have rock solid boots on the ground (your team - realtor, lender, prop manager, contractors, local family) in the places you want to buy, I would be very careful to do anything quickly.Unless you're looking at a suburb, $200k for a "decent sized SFH" sounds a bit low.

As far as books, there’s a ton to choose from and some popular ones have already been listed.

I put a house on the market Thursday at lunch that I wasn't sure would be popular and had 7 offers within 36 hours. 

Yes this has been a popular growing trend in some areas.

These are all skills that either you are a rock star and innately know, or you have to pickup along your life experiences.Again, in BP there are lots of questions on how to get these experiences. 

-Second relator is a popular people person, she also has a couple rentals herself but seems to be focused on finding someone’s perfect dream home.