I just accepted a promotion to Austin, TX from the Bay Area. 

What is your minimum acceptable Cash Flow? 

Is there any type of liability I'm exposing myself to, by accepting personal cars to just stay there overnight?

hi Erica, building any kind of list is all about personal relationships...Are you reaching out to people on various forums (esp here on BP), your social channels etc finding out about their investment goals, what kind of properties they are looking for?

Do we accept applications choose the best one and then run the background check on just that person?

I don't think it's a bad screening or something else - it's a professional tenant, every landlord nightmare.I did accept a tenant once without site seeing, she sent her friend and FaceTime with her walking through.

They accepted. 

The main thing of course is to be aware of and follow all the additional tenant protection ordinances that seattle has which go a lot further than WA state landlord tenant law does.Seattle has a just cause eviction law ,    additional categories of 'protected class' that you cannot discriminate against,  there are rules around what you can and cannot consider when doing screenings  (you cannot consider most criminal history for example),   and there are rules forcing you for example to accept a six month interest free payment plan for deposit and last months rent if the applicant requests it.   

Also, social media, looking owners up on Facebook, Googling them, etc. 

Definitely better than the mind-numbing effect of other social media sites.