But its tough  .. bottom line like my Daddy always said Real Estate is a belly to belly business.. got to get close to those that are going to help you..   

Generally for rental properties, owners have had to make updates and repairs over the years so they’re not in too bad a shape.The only regular exception to that I see a lot is knob & tube wiring still in the walls, basement and attic, and often still active (though owners will always say it’s not).Banks and insurance companies really don’t like knob and tube so you can either try to get the owner to remove it (fat chance in this market) or buy with private/hard money, remove the knob and tube, and then refinance to a regular bank loan.Sometimes people get away with lying to their insurance company and hoping the bank appraiser doesn’t notice it (they often don’t, since they do a fairly cursory inspection) and then removing it first thing after closing.

It also helps in stopping you from temptation as refinance will directly put FAT STACKS in your bank account TAX FREE.

I have a wide range of thin fat as interest.

If your hoa allows it which i assume is a fat no. 

Issue is it is always built upon a certain market cycle and standing, then when market changes it's either under-performing for property owners who leave and use standard PM to make much more, or the moment their is any bumps in the road it sucks the business dry of all capital and it goes belly up like a road scorched turtle in the Nevada desert. 

How many folks renting out places and doing VRs in them just went belly up when Covid hit? 

There's a lot of wisdom in that since banks don't want to have too much exposure in case any one investor goes belly up or has a midlife crisis and decides to cash out refi all their properties and flee the country.

And much like that we will pay likely lose interest after 6 months and go back to being fat and useless.

Like fat and happy oil co's that got rocked by fracking and electric cars, lumber folks will get what for if they continue to take advantage.