Remember, the notion of amassing wealth without investing is a dangerous myth perpetuated by self-proclaimed experts.

Good advice but I wouldn't say the 3 bdrm 2 bath 2 car garage is in a bad or dangerous neighborhood.

You don't want sketchy areas because you will get crappy tenants and smart females won't want to live there (too dangerous at night).

@Richard Benjamin Wilhite, @Bill B.makes some good points about loan terms and the strict identification rules for a 1031 exchange.I would add from a tax mitigation perspective that buying the largest property possible will give you the greatest amount of cost segregation possibility and at the lowest cost since it would be one study rather than several. 

We already signed the purchase agreement several months ago...it has been on hold while they mitigated a pest control issue that has taken 2 months.If it's that important, make it part of your purchase agreement.

When you analyze a market properly (1% Rules aren't properly), you're analyzing all the properties in that market at the same time.It's even more dangerous for newbies to use any Rule of thumb.Rules of thumb are nothing but shortcuts, which seems to be the growing method of doing anything now. 

When I asked the seller for receipts detailing the work done and requested permission to speak with the mitigation company directly, he refused.

Ready REI insisted that these repairs were unnecessary however 1) there is no way that we could get the rent that Ready REI advertised without repairs and 2) without repairs, the house was not just dangerous, but also uninsurable.

Get into details on how renovations are done with units occupied, what systems they use to mitigate tenant fraud on applications, how they set price levels for the units?  

How to mitigate unexpecting costs that come up, is a battle that happens on every deal, but how we handle it is to keep the reps up.