The town home would cash flow ~$200 after expenses (and is near new/low risk of large capital costs). 

There are usually large penalties, don’t mess that up.

Many fitness centers have large windows. 

However, I have reached out to and interviewed several PMs, and there seems to be a big communication issue - a large number of them are unresponsive, replying w/ pertinent info days after they said they would -  if at all. 

A lot of tenant issues are not that large and can be fixed by jack of all trades people.

Get a pre-approval letter from a trusted mortgage broker (I would avoid large banks)2.

It’s  not in a visually bad condition - foundations etc are good based on the report - just hasn’t been maintained too well - it’s a large custom home built in 2003 and single story and the agent kept persuading us it’s worth that much.

If I had been a large dog (e.g. 45 lbs or heavier, like Labrador, Golden Retriever, etc) I would have charged $45.

@Youssef Labib  I don't know about the success rate of this or any big guru program, however my thought is most people at the end have parted with a large sum of money with nothing to show for it. 

So, they take a large up front payment, pawn things like maintenance off onto them and in 2 years they take the house back?