Their may be small fees to cover things like background/credit and then maybe expense deposits further down the road to cover legal.

Prices are garbage right now, but interest rates are beautiful.

My wife and I found a beautiful house from the 1920's that had been converted into a non-conforming duplex back in the 1980's.

Background/credit check, call their last two landlords, call their employer (to verify income and to ask about performance), and make your standards very clear.

I have a background with real estate since my family has long been invested out here in California.

Definitely not TLDR- I really appreciated the background info.

A little background info, wife and I bought or second property with a VA loan its a 4-plex in need of serious updating almost a year ago for roughly 275k loan amount of 245kI recently finished the remodeling and we had the va appraisal done for a va cash-out which came in at 400k which us a bit low due to lack of comps in the state. 

But this is our first deal and, while I my background in finance makes me good with numbers, my lack of experience in rehabbing properties makes any projections I make very questionable.

The 2nd line on a sign would be something like beautiful executive home (so people know it's a higher end home).

As some brief background I started investing when I was 22 by completing my first live in flip.