I think the primary difference is that in Commercial properties, lenders are more interested in the Cash flow and potential upside when deciding to finance and not little emphasis on buyers individual credit worthiness or cash in bank. ( Don't get me wrong, he/she still needs to show 30% down payment but that is not necessarily his/her personal income).Flip that to the residential side - Owner credit worthiness is the most important criteria and the residential asset is secondary.

Also, one of the biggest thing to check is the buyer and their creditworthiness, as well as digging to see if the valuation of the property is what they say it is.

We look for a number of things on the credit report.... previous addresses, debt to previous landlords, debt to previous utility companies, responsible debt paying, total current outstanding debt and what type, general credit worthiness and demonstration of using credit responsibly. 

Your credit worthiness will play a part but your income typically won't.

Mortgage loans are made based on the borrowers credit worthiness.

With that set what our company does is build a corporate credit profile to a shelf corporation that is able to seek large rounds of funding based on the entire corporate credit package we build for your seasoned shelf corporation OR if you have an existing company which lacks the credit profile and credit worthiness we can built your company the same way you would the shelf corp. into being able to seek large rounds of funding.

While cap rates should never be more than a quick gut check, they are less applicable to residential property because the credit worthiness of tenants can vary wildly.

Keep in mind that your renters are probably not suited for buying, and there have been posts recently mentioning buying with as low as 600 so if they were above that they could buy.So you are better off looking at rent payment history and utility payment history to get a measure of credit-worthiness.

@Jimmy Klein This was a very common arrangement back in the 80's were home owners that had 50k to put down but could not qualify would be matched up with credit worthy investors. they would buy a SFR as owner occ. then have an agreement to sell in 3 to 5 years and with rampant appreciation that the BAy area experienced it was a great deal for all.

2 part question I am now credit worthy (mortgage score qualified) and after selling my wife on the fact that our 2016 tax return must all go towards our first Investment property and first property in general.