I manage hundreds of rentals and most of them are caulked every 5 - 10 years.DR Horton was the builder, and after we did two inspections and closed on the house, we found out that a good chunk of the roof was missing - they quickly finished the roofing. 

Be careful not to violate any Fair Housing laws during this process.

I think if you can nail that down you will be able to find a market easier.As a buy and hold investor some of the things that were important to me when deciding on a market were landlord tenant laws, price to rent ratio, housing demand, ability to build a team, large population 500K plus, multi-family availability and some other factors.take the process step by step and you will be fine. 

https://www.har.com/content/department/newsroom?pid=2141Houston Real Estate Highlights for December and Full-Year 2024:
-Following two consecutive years of declines, single-family home sales rebounded in 2024 with 85...

You don't want to distract the buyers from the house with too many items or stuff.

There are 9 x buyers for owner occupied houses than there are investor buyers. 

@Luke Spencer I am not on the management side but I can tell you it took 2+ years to fill 300 units at one of our facilities and the other just hit 300 units in 12/13 months so it really depends on the demographics, and local housing market trend, the more people moving in and out the higher the demand for storage.I think if you're looking at a saturated market then the upfront cash to turn the warehouse into self storage is not a good idea but then again, maybe those operators are on back roads ( low visibility ) and don't push google ads well.

This will show you that people have options to go out and pick another house over your place. 

I suspect there's lots of inventory, particularly for new folks coming into the area that find the real estate prices are much better than where they came from.Do you have a type of house you like to target?

@Tim Holt, Yes INDEED house hacking is the best option for most 1st time buyers.