The Cloud-Based/National BrokerageThese brokerages have gained immense popularity for their flexibility and technology.

These are becoming more popular in the secondary market and quite a few major wholesale investors offer them now.

Many are also exploring creative financing, using seller financing, subject-to strategies, or private capital to avoid traditional loan constraints.Across the board, creative deal structuring is becoming more popular.

House hacking is a popular strategy for first-time investors because they learn:- how to find and analyze deals- how to negotiate a deal- project management- property management- and more!!

I know it's not very popular, but the best advice I can give you is rather than save $100 per month by doing your own PM, use your time and energy to figure out your next move and how you can get there. 

Mortgage rates may, indeed, come down, but contrary to popular belief, the rates on 30-year mortgages and the rates that the Federal Reserve raises and lowers are not directly tied to one another.

The real differences are in pricing models, customer support, and how easy the features are to use.Well-established options mentioned for over a decade on BP:Appfolio (2004): Now focused mainly on large property managers.Rentec Direct (2007): Supports both landlords and property managers.RealPage (Propertyware & Buildium): Buildium has been popular with independent landlords.Low-cost and newer options: RentRedi, Stessa, Avail, Innago, Apartments.com (formerly Cozy), Rentvine and TenantCloud.Almost all platforms offer the core features you need.

Popular brand Locations that have left me are Dunkin, Verizon, Famous Daves, Remax, Citibank, and Metro PCS.  

I know the Appfolio sales team, as well as Juniper Square, and all the other investor portals try to talk up how they are a CRM, but they simply are not.Salesforce is your most powerful CRM, and likely overkill for 99% of situationsHubspot is a great option, and depending on contact list size is fairly affordableGoHighLevel is another one that is becoming more popular, but I have never used directly.There are a ton out there, and I am biased to Hubspot, because it is the one I have the most experience with, but the general contact record tracking, customization, ability to build dashboards, etc are all great in Hubspot and adequate to track contacts that may fall into various buckets: i.e. you can build your broker lists, your investor lists, your tenant lists, track your calls to each, setup up custom email campaigns for each separately, etc.

I would anticipate an area like this to be popular in the next decade for job growth due to so many companies locating and relocating jobs to Texas from corporate offices to warehouses, logistics, and distribution.