There's absolutely not any federal level housing law on this.  

Since then I’ve bought 14 houses from equity just sitting in properties doing absolutely nothing for me.

I work with a lot of flippers in the Denver Metro area and none of them obtain permits for their work unless its absolutely necessary or obvious.

Someone should absolutely have a lease with the tenants and you should really have a contract with the realtor.You need to know realtor commission, length of agreement, etc.

I’ve been looking for info on Margaritaville owner’s experiences, but can find absolutely nothing.

He even wrote a guest post for my blog about this topic, and would absolutely be a good resource for you!

We have a client right now that I can not name, but if lookup the top 5 organizations in residential housing, there on that list, an absolute TITAN, and no we do NOT do anything like this even for them....

The criteria varies with each market.. for some markets it has to be a 3+ bedroom + pool,  for many places it's absolute gold to have at least a mother in law suite but best to have 2 or 3 small units, etc etc..There are a ton of seller finance opportunities here as well (not many actually advertise it but they're open to it once you chat with them).

Definitely recommend this to anyone in business or real estate as it explains the ideas of focusing on your business and not in your business.All this being said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with acquiring your rentals on your own. 

@Jenna Meditz We've been using Innago for years and we absolutely love their software.