Having your past two years' tax filings (if you file independently), a W2 statement (if you have one), easily accessible last two months' bank statements, paystubs (if any), and some other items all in one place ready to share at any moment's notice will definitely save you headaches down the road when you are moving quickly to get approved and into contract on a place.4.

Or put your eggs in one basket for a top notch cash producing property (that could even at a later time become a condo conversion easily)?

What there was was not good but petty stuff easily explained. 

Don't believe the story that you can just easily get rich with other peoples' money.

So what you may "give up" in expenses, you should easily recoup in ROI.

@Mason JeffriesI would say you also have to know what is common for your market, look at a couple listings that are reasonable comps and see if they cover utilities, in my area the expectation is that water, sewer, trash are all covered, if I tried to pass those on, all potential tenants could easily find someone that does cover those.

Kitchen easily flows into the dining room, along with a generous living room and a sun room on the first level.

TO who is very good in our market can easily make 100k or more a year never leaving their home office. 

This seems like something that can easily be resolved without you getting involved in the middle of their drama.

However, Capital improvements which are a much bigger ticket and done less frequently can easily be much higher.