Knowing exactly what’s happening with the duplex—rents, repairs, tenant feedback—can help you catch issues early and save time, stress, and money in the long run.

Maybe not anymore, for now: https://natlawreview.com/article/texas-federal-court-issues-nationwide-injunction-against-enforcement-corporate

They focus on safety issues, such as wood rot, water damage, and structural integrity of balconies and decks.

Specific technical issue that triggered this post.

What I take some issue with is the techniques that guru's use to up sell and so on .. and they do nothing to qualify if the person paying them if the program does not work they are now into debt to the eyeballs and so on but then again who are we to say at some point.. think of  Hewlet and Packard they went into 15k worth of debt to start HP in late 40s or early 50s and that was a ton of money then :)

That is higher than most, but we want to see you succeed and only way to do that is to be sure every investor has room in the rent income to service unexpected issues. 

Part of my issue was not having a reasonably priced handyman ahead of time and eventually overpaying to just get it done and also inexperience as a manager.With that said, you essentially have two options: very cheap properties in less good areas (you're looking at 100k or less--which you might have trouble getting a good lender for)  or trying to do some sort of house hack (e.g. live in flip, live in rent by the room, multifamily) where you budget will be closer to 200k-300k.Personally, I would not look at real estate until you are maxing out your 401k and IRA, but lots of folks have done significantly better with real estate than stocks and would think I'm crazy for suggesting this.

@Nathan Deutsch Welcome TO BiggerPockets If you are not comfy with privacy issues while house hackingyou can try  a  FHA loan or start with a partnership to buy a STR etc

There usually aren't photos of the basements and that's were most of the big ticket issues are.

My developer client successfully defended the initial challenges and settled on this having PE rights, so he shifted the site plan to avoid the issue.