By creating a process, you can prevent these issues from taking place and save yourself a lot of time, trouble, and money.

And that can cost you time and money.

Try to anticipate other potential avoidable situations with a follow up inspection to assess the Locksmith’s work and ask your tenant(s) if you can also use the time to assess for other issues such as unchanged HVAC filters, leaky pipes, working shutoff valves, working smoke detector batteries, properly working downspouts, clogged dryer vents, evidence of water damage from leaking roof, etc,etc,etc.

The bank and mortgage company we are using is giving us a hard time about us co-signing due to my separation and new job due to only having been separated a couple weeks now.

Rates are a bit higher but if you can leverage up to do more than 1 flip at a time, it will be worth paying the lender fees.

But at the same time, it could relieve our financial burden and set us up for future investments.What would you do in this situation?

The first time this happened, the board of directors got an email showing trash everywhere, and HOA management offered to get "their people" out there to clean asap. 

They build up the deposit over time 

Curious what was the difference between you and the others who do not appear to have had as good of a time in the program?

For a first time investor, I definitely recommend house hacking for most people as homeowner loans are by far the best in terms of rate and LTV.