With some help, you can develop your personal list of criteria and what you are comfortable with.As soon as you have developed this type of checklist you can often eliminate offers very quickly and then focus on the few that are truly candidates.

Now you just need to hold on to the properties forever and hope they don't eliminate like kind exchange.Flipping is a great way to make money, but buy and hold is a better way to store wealth and generate passive income.

It eliminates having to buy your third property under the 1031 timelines. 

MO allows up to 2x the rent deposit but KS only allows 1x rent deposit but will allow additional pet deposit. 75% of renters have pets, that's a huge amount of prospects to eliminate by not allowing pets. 

ie; eliminate personal debt, invest in better data metric platforms for leads, invest in direct mailing or perhaps join mentoring and mastermind events?

I kind of wish I wouldn't have paid off the mortgage so quickly--It's not likely that we'll ever see a 30 year fixed investment property duplex rate at 2.875% again in my lieftime but I wanted to eliminate the payment and increase my monthly passive income by getting rid of that payment.

That said....Why don't you both rate and term refinance to eliminate the MI/balloon payment and keep both your homes? 

You can stop the clock from ticking on potential adverse possession claims by taking certain actions that eliminate one or more elements of the neighbors' potential causes of action. 

I am looking for a way to eliminate some options while not passing on good ones.

It's those maniacs that buy homes cash via quit claim deed off of craigslist that really get screwed.Make sure your property manager is a licensed real estate brokerage.Google Clayton Morris and/or Morris Invest for a cautionary tale of what not to do when buying turnkey real estateUnderstand you can not eliminate all risk, only mitigate it.