Preventive maintenance, strong tenant screening, and good management will produce the most predictable outcomes.

Having said that there is nothing that prevents you from wholesaling a property if you are not miss-representing what you are doing and making false promises to the seller.

How I do it is keep the water/gas bills in my name (for exactly why you do to prevent liens), but build into the lease that tenants are responsible for the bill.

If there is a component missing (fixture) there really will not be a good way to test the system unless you can shut off the supply line to it and prevent the air from escaping there.

If pictures are going to prevent people from coming out (Hoarder) then it's best to leave them out.

Mainly beacaue the high insurance costs prevents our desired cash flow. 

Also that dirty areas on the unit can only be prevented by proper air filtration.

You'd think if the city of Oakland wants to encourage the development of affordable housing, they wouldn't want to prevent small multifamily properties (that account for a lot of the housing stock here) from getting the incentives larger developers do. 

-HVAC -- you have to get a receipt from a HVAC contractor saying its running clean-Bathroom tub needed more caulking around the edge, to prevent water from reaching subfloor-Toilet was running-a Window wouldn't hold itself up, which ended up being a pretty expensive repair. 

I'll be watching your progress and rooting for you!