Look to take the slow and steady path towards creating a profitable and more importantly - a sustainable business.Best of luck moving forward.

A property owner was sued by a tenant who did work on the building for injuries sustained. 

Biggest reason why investors will not start in CA unless they have the funds to sustain the value of a recession when it was inflated when bought. 

So focusing on cashflow, IF IT IS GENUINE AND SUSTAINABLE, makes it almost impossible to go broke.However it is also almost impossible to get wealthy on it either so that's the problem. 

There has to be repairs done in a timely manner and you are legally allowed to withhold rent, not negate from paying it altogether, but withhold it.

I have someone (that I trust) telling me I'm screening residents in a manner contradictory to FCRA. 

First of all, thank you Bigger Pockets for such a wonderful website to connect and learn from professionals in such an efficient manner!

@Cody Furman first of all let the residents know that there is a new sheriff in the town with a welcome letter and explain the everything you can in that letter and then deploy some cloud based software like Buildium to track your tenants and the rent and charge late fee and give them vacation notices on timely manner and evicted the bad ones and do not raise the rents until you are stabilized and do the screening to fill in vacancy otherwise you will be in big trouble if bring in bad ones.Charge application fee of at least $35 per couple and they will pay and use that for screening.

roof and ac are a must for sure, second question is since we are gonna live there that means one family will have to leave and we have to decide which side we want so how do we approach this in the most delicate manner?

That gives an accurate idea of what's fair and sustainable for a true business.