If you get 1% to get an appointment / follow up call and close on 1 you are winning. 

My lease requires professional carpet cleaning, which would cost more than $500 for a home of that size.Yes, it's reasonable to reduce the cost because she was such a long-term tenant.

Quote from @Patricia Steiner: There are several lenders who offer low/no closing cost options for first time homebuyers.

Simply have the tenants sign the new lease AND have them provide you with the additional $100 BEFORE you sign the lease yourself.

My wife, Elsa, and I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago, but we currently live in British Columbia, Canada.

Happy to chat...being a local GC takes out a lot of the risk of the biggest variable for most investors (unpredictable rehab costs) and also allows you to consider more options than the average investor, with your rehab costs being significantly lower.

Think of vehicles like the cyber truck where you need to sign up ahead of time to pre-order and so many people want it that the value increases shortly after they are released.

I'm also seeing lots of homes for sale that were used as Airbnbs, so I'm wondering if that along with these numbers may indicate it's an overly saturated market, and if these are signs that maybe I should keep searching for a stronger market, or just a property that cash flows given the average annual revenue?

Im willing to do cosmetic repairs up to about $20k but dont want to deal with a gut job.

So either you pay for the repair out of the idle cash in your account, file an insurance claim and use those funds, or rollover/transfer funds from another retirement account to cover the cost.