Hi Christopher,I usually advise clients to seek a smaller lender; with the large banks you're often just a number. 

Handymen are hard to find because the economics are horrible.My solution has been to scale my work up.

Large grocery store within 1 mile. 

It's up to you what kind of a landlord you plan on being over your real estate investing career but you do have an unwritten covenant with the society at large to serve, and protect, In other words to be responsible.

Criteria will depend largely on the asset. 

Also be cognizant that the majority of tax liens are bought by large firms with wall st $ that they get cheap thus can bid them down.

I am trying to scale.

They only need to close within a time frame that includes the first one to sell (in other words they all sell within 180 days of the sale of the first property) as long as you can locate the right replacement and get the right terms.Another very attractive option would be to scale down a little and maybe look for a replacement property that you could get for $600K - like a 2.4 - $3 mil property that needs $400K of work to get it to high functioning. 

I’ve been largely focused on SFHs, but will definitely look into duplexes.

The ones that really get the blood flowing are the ones like "298" where the purchase happens to be a large number of units.I still feel like a newbie but I'm a 100 mph type of person.