It's extra work, with no benefit to you...and possible issues going forward with more expense to replace and a movement away from anything gas, particularly in blue states. 

If they’re only late 2 or 3x’s a year, I usually don’t even charge them a late fee.

Although it varies between hard money lenders, expect to pay something along the lines of between 10-25% of purchase price, and they will usually fund something like 100% of renovations up to 75% ARV (rest would come out of pocket).

They will call you each day, which is usually a good thing because you'll always know how your loan application is doing and they'll make every effort to close by the deadline—barring any unforeseen circumstances.

goosehead is usually ok 

Even if you default, the return to a lender is easily calculated using the loan terms usually defined in the note.

We usually pay our private lenders 8-10% (mostly 10 these days) so perhaps you could try to offer a little less and see if that works.

I would add an extra layer of tenant screening by calling previous landlords and their personal references.

We may learn about a market's economic variety and its ability to weather downturns by looking at how it did over a previous real estate cycle, which usually lasts a decade or more.

That's odd, because I could have pulled an extra $35K out over and above my out of pocket expenses.