We also refinished the cabinets with new hardware and installed new countertops.

Without doing that, you can't know if there's any looming unforeseen expenses that will be hitting you in the forehead (i.e. wallet) and killing your returns.

We found a local auction site with Home Decorators Collection, Amazon, hardware store returns.

They're sold in most big box hardware stores.

Prior to her leaving she sold appliances, hardware from the cabinets, entire doors with the jams, and even the compressor to the car lift next to the garage.We spent a month just cleaning the home to make it livable and I moved in.

I have 3 fourplexes with basically 900 sqft apartments.My "rehabs" so far are basically re-paint (walls, not trim), do minor repairs, replace carpet w/ LVT (about 650 sqft), replace carepet on stairs, and replace the countertops w/ pre-fab laminate tops from big box hardware stores.Materials and labor come in around $4500/unit when I do that. 

As a guarantor the only right the parent has is to be apprised of whether the tenants are meeting their financial obligations and the have the obligation to open their wallet if little Jane or Jonathan defaults.

If you pay $500.00 for a good commercial inspection, that could be money lost, sure, but it could save your wallet huge.    

Start investing in real estate sooner.Start overfunding a permanent life insurance as soon as I had steady income.Buy more Bitcoin when I read about it in the early 2010s, and not loose my original wallet...

 I let a tenant convince me to allow them to pay using Google Wallet about 4-5 years ago.