Don't take their unofficial advice as gospel, so do appropriate due diligence prior to making changes to the property. 

Finally, we do not care about your tax returns, etc.- since these loans are primarily based off of the asset as collateral.

There is much confusion about the 4% and 6% in property taxes.Non owner occupied property is taxed at 6% of the value to get the taxable value.This does NOT mean your actual property tax is 6% of the purchase price for rental property,In reality property taxes are about 2% of the purchase price for rental properties and about 1% of the purchase price for owner occupied properties.Google Greenville County Property Tax estimator and play with it and get a sense of how it works.3.

My go to for lowest hassles, taxes and  transaction costs are Lease Options or selling directly to the renters. 

Thanks Tom Wheelwright for writing the book "Tax Free Wealth". 

When a tenant is far past due on a balance (rent, late fees) do you first take it up with collections, or small claims court? 

I’d recommend steering away from condos due to high HOA fees, which can eat into returns.

As an incentive for her to pay on time, can I charge her a late fee after 5 days from the due date and can I charge her for every day she's late?

My wife and I create Real Estate Meet-ups wherever we live (lived in many places due to being in the Navy for 21 years) and I believe that these groups help change that potential energy of potential investors into kinetic energy and make kinetic investors.

It also could limit your exit strategy if the market softensseeing a lot of fix and flippers in kc as an example getting crushed due to this