It's not common sense for most tenants. 90% of our tenants would leave the hose on if we didn't tell them to remove it.  

Do your deals require you to pay any utilities - trash - water - lawn care - snow removal for your tenants?

The property rented under a two-year lease for $900 a month.The property inspection turned up pretty clean, just a few items like pushing insulation back into place or removing some pending inspection/certification labels.  

One way to try to get financing is to ask the seller to connect the units with a door or remove the extra stove for the second kitchen (temporarily?).

It may be cheaper than a professional inspection and I am not a big carpet fan, so you get that out anyway (especially if near end of useful life) and get to see the sub-floor, investigate thoroughly, and treat it if necessary (bleach/water, Mildicide, etc), and explore if there is a source (leak) or not, or if it was tenant negligence....Then you could go from there and call in professional help if needed and explore who should bear the costs, if any.I agree, there is some risk of rewarding the behavior (the complaint, by giving a new floor), but you mitigate it some by making the tenant remove all items from the room and endure some inconvenience.

The Belvidere Heights area does have a significantly higher crime rate than average in Grandview, and almost every single house there has serious foundation issues because the builder who developed that neighborhood removed the rebar from the foundation before the concrete was poured. 

I personally think the cyclone fence is quite ugly and would be one of the things I would want to remove if I want to improve the curb appeal, but the agent that seems to be familiar with the area advised against it as he says it's desired by renters in the area, if not for the reason alone that they may have a pet dog and it this would be their running around space.

One of the first things I asked during the negotiation phase was to have the tenant removed before I took over.

Bait stations on the exterior are a very good idea but personally, the first step is to set snap traps in the attic and catch what is inside currently, step 2 is to seal up the house to remove the entry points, and step 3 is the exteriobait stations to control the population.You mentioned Home Depot expensive traps - snap traps are not expensive and can be used over and over again.

Did they remove the Bronze package already?