It is an added expense but it takes away any liabilities of tenants getting injured while shoveling and it keeps them happy to know it is taken care of and they aren't trapped in case of emergency. 

This will give you some information to get you started as the other code editions will be similar.2012 International Residential CodeSECTION R310 EMERGENCY ESCAPE AND RESCUE OPENINGSR310.1 Emergency escape and rescue required.

Did you have an application with whom to contact in the event of an emergency? 

What you can do here is have an agreed upon arrangement with a 2nd party to act as your go-to in the case of an emergent repair that you can't address - your dad may be a good fit for this.

kind of a emergency fund if you will

I gave both tenants a welcome letter informing them of how to pay rent and of emergency contacts.

Account Closed  One other suggestion I would have for you is to take a certain percentage of each rent payment and put it in a separate savings account for an emergency fund.  

Managing an out-of-state vacation rental has so many challenges and headaches (and middle of the night emergency calls that you can't really deal with yourself) but there is something kind of amazing about it too. 

So I offered to partner with him on a deal.I was thinking we'd take title in both of our names, but he'd be on the (FHA) loan since having a mortgage is good for building his credit, and because I wanted to reserve my credit and financials for emergency exit strategies in our flipping business (in case the house doesn't sell).  

Two trends seem to be the emergence of online lenders, such as LendingHome, and the launch of fix-and-flip financing arms by financial institutions (B2R Finance, Colony, etc.).