If the tenant is not cooperating with your due intelligence then I guess that sort of says something before you even start.Since you get to look at the lease that is already in place ensure it has provision in the lease that are of high concern to you.

Or any other advice on how to intelligently invest in real estate (presumably to purchase a rental, but could also be a partnership on a flip deal) that you could provide?

Best Practices for the Intelligent Real Estate Investor by John Reed

Still learning about financial intelligence.

Sometimes the personalized offer from a qualified buyer wins out over the highest offer with no strings because the the highest offer is not always from the most qualified (or intelligent) buyer.My source on this letter writing strategy: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-strangely-effecti...

Originally posted by @Carl Mathis:AFAIK section 8 inspections are owner certification only at this time due to covid.also: Be super duper careful with section 8 - many people have good experiences but the concern is that if anything goes sideways you are stuck in a horrible situation with a bureaucracy run by incompetent low intelligence bumbling fools making everything hard / impossible.

Education is step one, which will allow you to have intelligent conversations with these people.

Additionally, it is clear that with intelligent decision making there is plenty of money to be made and still engage professional contractors.

@Jay Hinrichs I also think that the number of posts can be misleading in that some people post a bunch of nonsense and can get a high number of posts just because they have the intelligence enough to click the “post reply” button. 

So, it boils down to increasing the income side of your budget in an intelligent and low risk fashion, that you understand and enjoy.