I personally only require a NDA in more cases prior to financials, and that should be sufficient to get financials an LOI is not usually needed.2.

If you get too busy to self-manage or, forbid, get injured/sick, you want to know the property is self-sufficient financially.

That two year period also gave me sufficient time to learn a lot about the different investing strategies, to sharpen my deal analysis skills, to continue to develop relationships with property managers, agents, banks, contractors, attorneys, and tax strategists, and to really lay out a plan of attack moving forward.  

I am OK with water wells but agree that rural areas and lagoons are deal breakers.I would add “lack of sufficient affordability gap” to the list of deal breakers.  

My husband's name is not on our house because I bought it before we were together, so we can't use his income even though his income is sufficient to pay our bills.

Personally, if I had sufficient reserves and there was enough cushion in the deal to allow for a rent drop, I'd feel comfortable using my home equity as a downpayment. 

I think that would be sufficient to include the well and septic into that 10%. 

My second spreadsheet is mostly pulled from census data/trulia/zillow (so I take the numbers with a grain of salt) but it lists on the X axis the zipcodes as well as the county as a whole.On the Y axis it lists: average listing price, median sale price (90 day period), median sale price versus last year, price per square foot, price per square foot versus last year, median rent per month, vacancy rate, annual property growth value, number of rentals on the market for that month, median rent versus last year, median rent divided by 1BD/2BD/3BD etc etc, median age, median household income, school districts, single residents, college educated percentage, percent home owners, population growth etc (there's more but I feel this is sufficient to get the point)3.)

I was thinking of whether to get an LLC or just obtain umbrella insurance and sufficient liability insurance.

Redding has much more reasonable rents, therefore; the allowance offered by insurance companies seem to be sufficient for the market, so far anyway.