Egress cover - if heavy rain has been occurring, you'll also want a plastic cover for your egress window.

The books you’ve read are excellent resources, and they lay a solid foundation for making informed decisions.

As others have commented - DSCR Loans tend to be a great solution for people in your exact scenario - fed up and tired of giant hassle and paperwork for conventional or bank financing - not worth the often pretty small benefit in rate or terms.Check out this article I published last year on BiggerPockets on what to expect documentation wise for DSCR Loans - they have become a nice blend between solid underwriting and doc sets needed, but not too much (and not too little like notorious "no doc" loans)https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/what-documents-do-you-nee...

You're just going to get more confused-- in response to the bold.

Any BP member investor.Next best person is CPA, as I gather from responses here. 

Is there a driveway/patio/other solid surface near your house that would drain water toward the house?

It's also a good idea to randomly call to see how responsive they are on a regular basis not when they are trying to get your business. 

We use an online payment system and we only allow one tenant to be responsible for signing up to make the monthly payments.

Late response.. but I really loved TurboTenant.

I run a call center for Real Estate so here are my best tips:1) Before hiring a caller, make sure you have a solid process that you can plug someone into.