Choose providers who routinely practice in your municipality. 

There’s an interesting investigation against the company that claims BOA significantly overcharges homeowners for routine home-purchase appraisals.

They are easily and routinely pierced by the courts.

The house is 1100 square feet.I was fixing things up in June in the house during the day and I never felt uncomfortable, except in the one room with the slider, which is okay now because of the window film.

And I am very uncomfortable handing over part of my financial life to someone I've never had a chance to really talk to.Also - is there some reason that tax professionals don't like to file extensions?

I would begin by determining which leads must be eliminated based on:1) Amount to cure too large for your budget2) Amount to cure unlikely to yield motivated prospect3) Eliminate corporate entities and perhsps churches4) Eliminate zip codes you don't want to do business in, if any7) I don't want vacant land deals, so I scrub those se8) I don't want commercial properties, so scrub those9) Use title company or other online sources for data correlation10) Use VA to scrub manually all repetitive tasks, once criteria and routine created I also perform other scrubs for situations that are proprietary to my ideal prospects.

The "Miracle Morning Routine" Daily Journal (aka. 7-Step Morning Routine) (Morning Miracle Routine - Journals) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NF337BM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_i_JgqZFbD5A083J

Other than the emotionally uncomfortable experience you told us that you encountered during their entire process, you don't seem to have nailed down real specific ssues that you can caution someone to beware of.

You should segregate your contacts methods to you one for routine issues (the door is squeeking) (email, form filled out) one for emergencies (the toilet is flooding the house) (phone call/text)Secondly you must delay gratification except in the case of an emergency.  

You can however focus on the most recent occurrences.As you know, it's not a good idea to allow a tenant to routinely pay rent late and it's not a good idea to allow a tenant to deduct anything from the amount of rent that is due.The whole stove incident could have been handled better if after she failed to allow the stove delivery the first time, you had served a legal Notice to Enter for the purpose of installing the stove on your second attempt.