Many cities and counties have standards for a variety of things, including anything they view as a safety or healthy hazard.

I know 2 that no 2 recessions are the same and there are a wide variety of opinions. 

These inspections must be completed by a certain date, which can be called the inspection contingency date (though is officially referred to as a number of days from the contract date wherein a buyer must notify the seller of any defect revealed by the inspection).

If you decide to back out of the deal, you will lose that money, but if a home inspection reveals a bigger issue than what you are willing to tackle, you will get that money back.

I've leased and managed a variety of properties big and small throughout the years, but never thought that I myself could start a business doing so.

*Make sure you pick a market with very landlord favorable laws as well- you want to be able to remove people at a low cost if things don't go well & you want tenants to know how easy this will be for you before they move in.One other thing everyone should do when selecting management: ask for a fee schedule for a variety of different types of service calls, and ask for a scope of work or two for some unit turns they've done so you have an idea of what to expect for maintenance and repair costs.

We have a variety of sources for 30 year money. 

Check out the article here:Big List of Cleveland Property Management CompaniesContract terms, inspections, and the variety of services vary greatly among the companies here, so you'll want to be sure to have a detailed checklist when you do your due diligence. 

A simple search on here reveals most of the horror stories are from out of state landlords who have an incompetent property manager look over their assets .

If you want accurate values, you need to get comps and property assess a property.As far as future values go, you take take your best educated guess based on a variety of statistics (like job growth, population growth, increase in median wages, etc) but nobody has an accurate crystal ball.