This move will be purely for our first investment in real estate.

Some sump pumps can have their own battery backup or alarm if not working.

In 25 years of property management, I have never heard one good reason for a landlord to disclose to the tenants that they are the ultimate owner.In most cases, it's pure ego on the part of the investor.

The wifi is what will allow you to access the door remotely.If you don't want wifi on it, Then you can still get a smart lock you'll just need to pre-program several different codes into it, and then give out those codes appropriately but you'd need to be on site at the door itself to program initially or update it.From personal experience I find the touch screen or wifi locks to be complete POS's that are not reliable and the battery does not last long.  

Approaching entity from a purely tax perspective is a different avenue entirely, that’s for your CPA, who has no experience in courtroom and will lack knowledge concerning the vulnerability of assets.

It also cracks me up that Flint is on this list but not Detroit.Maybe they're filtering purely by numbers with no regard to the quality of the city/area?

I do not want to live in the property I buy, just purely for renting.

NOTHING ELSE occupies their interest in the same way.So this is an informal poll: does anyone here in the BP forums do real estate purely on the side and doesn't wish they did it full-time?

If a toilet runs at full pressure, the tenant is going to call you sooner than later from the sheer racket it's making.If you are purely looking for leaks, you will spend significant sums of money to save yourself very little money in the long run. 

One thing I run into often are borrowers who are looking for loans based purely on the After Repair Value of a Fix and Flip investment.