We did receive deposits at closing as a credit.

Building strong relationships with lenders is key working with local banks or credit unions that understand the market can give you an edge.

At this location we will move 20 of the 115 to autopay, the rest are already on autopay (debit/credit card/bank echeck).  20 doesn't sound like much but times 5 other locations this will reduce our workload. 

What documents do they require, what credit scores do they allow, how do they verify previous rental history, etc.?

I just completed a 80K HELOC with a local credit union.

The lowest loan amount I've seen allowed is around $55K with minimum property value/purchase price at $75K, just for the subject property. 

They will say this to five realtors and take the lowest commission and eventually hate that they did it because the agent will suck.If you have the experience, you have the leverage.

If you had a paid off rental house, and others with mortgages, and you wanted to use the equity in the paid off rental for a cash offer on another property, how would one do that if the DTI ratio doesn't work due to having too much credit utilization with the addition of the new loan.

Even though we do run credit and background, I refer to us as private money lenders rather than hard money lenders based primarily on the cost of capital.

As long as I maintain good credit, my good credit will blend  with whatever credit they establish on their own to generate their score.