Maintenance at at PM company or one of the big hedge owners like AH4R, leasing at apartment complex will teach you a lot about applications, fraud, leases, collections, evictions. 

We are able to get great incentives and the ability to own an investment property that take a very light maintenance budget for the first few years is a huge plus.  

@Rory DarcyRecommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?

There are several other issues (undisclosed maintenance markup fees, excessive charges to our account, significant reductions to agreed rent without communication, etc).

Then you need to account for soft expenses like Vacancy/turnover, maintenance, and capital expenses.

.- Put Upward pressure on real estate operating costs: Increased costs for raw materials and supplies, and the likely increased costs for labor involved in many real estate related CapEx and maintenance projects signal the risk of increase in costs for real estate operators.If there is no impact on near-term supply, a modest slowing of inbound (illegal) migration, more reason to believe that the cost of many goods and services will increase, and real reason to believe that inflation triggered by something other than an increase in the money supply (namely the cost of specific goods and services that are NOT housing going up, which comprise the CPI) will force the Fed to raise rates, this, on the whole, is not good for real estate investment returns. 

How are they going to hold down my maintenance costs? 

We offer refinances with no tenant required and no seasoning required.

There is more maintenance cost when they are small keeping the grass down.  

If some landlords are requiring them to pay application fees before they even know they want a rental versus ones that don't which do you think they will choose.