Hard hard pass on section 8OCCASIONALLY I'll take a tenant with rental assistance from a group like Salvation Army or something only because the paperwork is less ridiculous.

We decided not to go down that path because we felt assisted living was less risky from a regulatory standpoint. 

I also think there is a decent use case for people with more capital that want to diversify their risk, but also want to select individual properties.

Here's the details:I was listening to a BP podcast or BP adjacent podcast over the last 2 weeks and I remember it mentioning a company that can assist in styling for renovating homes. 

As mentioned, your best bet is to get an adjuster to try to assist on working with you to maximize the amount received.

If a cash out refinance, many lenders will allow the cash out to satisfy the reserves requirement.DSCR lenders generally let you vest either individually or as an LLC.

If they were separately metered, each tenant would pay the $116.50 base fees and their individual use, which would be 3x higher than what they pay when sharing a meter.There are many options, but don't make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Long term rentals are unattractive in CA imo especially since you can earn a lot more with different rental strategies even doing mid term rentals will still probably be more profitable than doing a long term rental.As far as hiring a contractor or bringing in subs for each item that will come down to how much you want to be involved, you'll save money finding and subbing out individual jobs but it will take you longer and you will need to manage everyone you hire and contract to do business with whereas a contractor will manage all that for you but there will be a premium put onto the price obviously for that. 

There are over 20 active CPAs here in Biggerpockets assisting RE investors with their tax planning.

Money Back claims are easy - except when you are asked for the money back then the excuses start.We bought into one that is well known and is actively soliciting new members several years ago and found it to be a total waste of money - generic material, generic advice and support that vanished when we did not see the results they claimed and asked for some additional assistance.