It was a tenant with a couple unauthorized cats that sprayed everywhere and we spent $9,000 on cleaning, flooring, and paint. 

Listen to them but take what they say with a grain of salt.5.

Id also call some local pest control and they can spray quarterly or monthly to help and prevent bedbugs so they die 24 hours within contact of the stuff they spray. 

The snow plowing/salting and common area lawn mowing were terrible the first half of the year.

If you have commercial experience and are an excellent asset manager (managing the property manager, driving revenue, reducing expenses,  managing GCs)You wont just provide value to a sponsorYou will be highly sought-after after by sponsorship groups.The ones worth their salt know how incredibly valuable a strong asset manager is (and how much work it takes)So if you can bring that skillset, I have a feeling it won't take long for you to find a sponsorship team. 

I have had this goal of buying my first duplex and have talked to real estate investors, realtors, lenders, appraisers and have been encouraged so much to where I am anxious to dive into this.Now that I am 18 I have absolutely no debt, a credit score of 727, I have 28k sitting in a certificate of deposit, a couple years of working consistently under my belt, I’ve also been investing in my Roth IRA, I feel very blessed to be in this situation.I am still in high school, I know it wouldn’t be smart to buy a house right now but something in me is so anxious to buy this house I know I have to have patience but I don’t know if I should start the process of getting pre approved, finding a good investor friendly realtor, lender, preparing my documents or if I should just wait.When analyzing deals in my market I have crystal clear real estate deal criteria my strategy is house hacking a duplex, price range of 500,000-600,00 in Salt lake, Utah! 

This is often taught as part of spray and pray marketing.

Take it with a grain of salt or a whole carton or morton's iodized, because at the root of it every investor is different and so is every unique investment situation.Thanks for all the great insight, Sean!

The one time you don't salt the sidewalks coupled with a litigious tenant..... they're going to sue whether or not there's an LLC. 

I'm not an attorney, so take my advice with a grain of salt: a broker who works with investors of all walks of life, big and small, I've noticed most form an LLC once they have two properties or more.Many will form one if they just have one, but if you're talking about house hacking, keep in mind, conventional lenders don't allow entity closings and they are the only lenders that'll allow you to live on the property.DSCR/hard money lenders allow you to close in an entity, but you can't live on the property.