They need a new lease and wanted to be my first clients.

So todays folks that do it do it mainly on line .. and many foreigners will pay 2 to 5k to won a piece of the US not knowing what they bought was basically worthless.. many cattle ranchers just use this land like its there own..

Part of my motivation for jumping out on my own was the ability to partner with a good friend who is a 20+yr GC and in our conversations the past few years he's had a big desire to do flips and move away from client work.

The situation as I see it goes like this: I offer a way for a client to purchase a home and education/information on how that can happen for them (fixing credit, saving money, etc) and they are successful and in the end own their home...... or.... they do not follow the suggested path and they lose yet even more money. 

I would never advise any of my CPA clients to put rental properties inside an IRA. 

I have managed 200+ units at once and can tell you that starting out you should focus on setting up your processes contracts and such, then scale to larger properties.For our clients that manage themselves we try to set them up with as much of the infrastructure as possible so that they have a head start and can just worry about the normal tenant issues.

An example of a defence that may work might be a foreign landlord who was unable to provide the documentation that the Section 8 authorities require (e.g SSN perhaps) before they can pay rent to that landlord. 

Cosmo, I have a client who owns about 20 or so units in Fort Wayne.

Since you don't have the unit in an LLC, I, as a business adviser, would recommend to a client in the same circumstance to charge themselves the rent, and to TRANSFER THE FUNDS TO THE APPROPRIATE ACCOUNT.

In addition to Jame's list, I'd recommend you ask about the following when you're looking at TK:References: Ask for references from long-term and repeat clients, and then actually call them.