All this time and energy spent vs picking up the phone, calling tenant and saying "Oh hey, curious where all this is coming from, kinda caught me by surprise".     

Or can you pick up some additional contiguous land for cheap, and put your retention basin on that land?

Picked up a few things here and there, but also spent a lot of time reading, researching, listening, and asking a ton of questions.

Can’t do that with stock picking.  

You would think the City would give me some slack since I just fixed an absolute eye sore out of my own pocket but they went through last month and picked the entire place a part.

If so, this is the quickest way to get investors to stop opening your emails and picking up your phone calls. 

You have found the deal which is the most difficult part especially in todays market. 20k saved is awesome and although not enough to pick this up, I would continue saving up.

No auditor will look at every transaction, but they pick a fair number to try to find any issues, as well as review the General Ledger entries, bank reconciliation reports, etc in an attempt to find any wrong inputs, or worse, blatant fraud.

Because the property's water bills were not registered in the tenant's name, I had to pick up the bill.

What are you looking to pick up for your first investment?