But unless you know how to roof this is going to cost you your weight in gold.

He/she will be worth their weight in gold over the years and if your finances are currently very simple, you will not be paying them for very much of their time to actually DO your taxes when it comes down to filling out the paperwork.Get some word-of-mouth recommendations from local real estate investors on who's good, then drop by their office to see if you like each other in a quick interview/intro.Spend your time on the basics of managing your general business and finding deals and don't try to play catchup with accountants and attorneys so you can go around them with pieces of software....the pros may bill three figures an hour but they should find you much more than that in savings and business advice - so in the end, their hourly rate doesn't really matter much at all.

Lots of rules, regulations, upkeep and operational costs.

Where do a majority of upkeep cost go?

In my area I can get great pictures for $125 worth their weight in gold.6) Someone is going to need to go through all of your paperwork and ensure you have all of the addenda specific to where you are.

@Jered Sturm I was a user for the contractor veraion of qb, didn't like the heavy weight of the program, so I switch to a simplier qb, all i needed was the "class" feature of it, i use this to separate income on my jobs.

You have to watch out for balance transfer fees and weight these against your current charges. 

Plus the headache and upkeep costs.  

I brought a cupboard into the kitchen on a dolly and when I entered the kitchen where the click-lock starts the weight of the dolly seriously busted a quarter-inch of the flooring due to the weight.

There was a news story about the building and the upkeep of it in the local news a few years ago.