I joined last month and the ability to network face to face with local investors is sort of priceless.

I don't know about your area but in Ca theres a law called the implied warrenty of habitability in short it says that in order for you to collect rent that the rental must have running water, the ability to produce hot water plumbing trash bins pest free, electrical service heat source and so forth.

I would normally suggest you are making a mistake even doing mail over forcing ACH payments but my guess is that would assume low income = no bank account or no ability to ACH.

In reality, the investor could actually live in the property, but instead they choose to excerise their permissable ability to sublease the property and profit from the spread during the lease term.  

This means building a reputation of honesty, reliability and consistency as well as having the ability to work well with others.

You will have to be confident in your ability to resell the place for them to accept a contingency, however, or else it is not worth it to them to tie the house as pending, when they could be marketing it for sale to another buyer who is buying it directly. 

Lock the thermostat so tenants do not have ability to change temp settings as well.

What I am looking for is the ability to review (hopefully in Excel) the prices, square footage, number of bedrooms, etc.  

Though the VA loan does limit your ability to flip homes or even conduct the BRRRR Strategy.  

It makes more sense to buy it myself and flip it but I don't have that kind of cash reserves or the ability to get a loan yet.