Make sure the home has quality furniture and items that don’t fall apart in a few years.

Some HOAs might carry insurance for "loss of income" due to such situations, but it’s not guaranteed across the board.

I'm sure there may be plenty of other metrics we are not taking into account here and if so, please let us know what other critical items we should be looking at!

Meanwhile most who obsess over entity formation fail to carry proper insurance, work with unlicensed and uninsured contractors, fail to execute contracts, can't explain the difference between being listed as additional insured and certificate holder or request to be listed as additional insured on vendors insurance policies etc.

Anything that is already there you can highlight in your listing, but people who need these items generally don't move around a lot after paying to put them in wherever they are living. 

They will provide you with a list of items, do them.

If there are items you need to replace and they are less than $2,500, you can take advantage of the de minimis safe harbor election, which allows you to deduct those costs in the current year rather than capitalizing them.

Example - sold a retail/ service center for $1,750,000 with a $1,300,000 note I carried back at 10% interest.

Aside from the items that you already suggested, the only other thing you can use to verify the stated income is the seller's bank statements (not all sellers will release their bank statements, but some will).The expenses will vary a bit from owner to owner, so you're better off reaching out to a local property management company to get an understanding of how much things cost, unless you plan to self-manage the property. 

I'm currently working on scaling up quickly through purchasing large SFR portfolios and/or apartments, and I'm in preliminary talks with a few sellers willing to carry back a seller 2nd note of 20-30% (i.e. the down payment).I'm looking for a lender that will move forward in financing the initial 70-80%, in 1st position, alongside a seller 2nd of the remaining 20-30%, totaling 100% CLTV.