@Jay Hinrichs I think my goal in posting this was to determine if I should've skipped having a realtor altogether, as you suggest in your last paragraph.

Skip all this and just hire a good property manager so you can focus on finding your next rental!!

Otherwise, you can use skip tracing websites, but those cost. 

see why you should skip this process.

They are the one stop shop.West & West is an attorneys office who does closings if you want to skip the actual title company.

I would skip India and Mexico. 

Prepare for a tear-down or gut-out rehab, demo the whole house and leave 2 walls so you will skip "new construction" requirements and it will just be a regular remodel in the eyes of the law. 

Just put it directly towards the principal balance on the first mortgage and skip the whole HELOC middleman part. 

Must this investor skip out on tax breaks, such as deprecation, in order to prove his income to the lending institution?

I would skip RentRedi  - tried it - I would use excel over that softwareI use stessa - but it has no maintenance request features - which is the big glaring hole for that product.