It has been a huge success so far, some major rents being collected in NJ :)

The best way to be certain of market rents is to work with an experienced local property manager and have them go through your property and give you the market rents and what/if anything you could do to improve the property and rents.Short of that, look at similar rentals to yours that are listed and use a comparative market analysis method to determine market rents.Really recommend working with a local property manager for making your ownership experience as passive as possible, for compliance issues related to renting, and to help you scale to more properties leveraging the property manager's time and experience.To Your Success!

When you get the deposit back, if there are major discrepancies, send them photos of before and after.

The only issue now is what Raymond mentions above...most lenders require reserves of 3-6mo for approval on their investment loans.

This may mean picking up something that needs work or something that has a unique issue that turns homeowners away that you might need to fix at some point, but it's possible to still make money in GR.

Because the cosigner is not responsible for mowing the lawn or reporting maintenance issues, they have no rights to the rental, and I don't want to communicate with them about anything but the money. 

Parents as co-sign which mitigates that issue 99/100 I believe. - Available for FHA - 23 years old, live with my parents and I love it, as do they, so no rush to move out.- Hard/smart worker.

I saw it advertise on a major realtor website.

My issue with many guru's, even the "better ones" is most seem to never put their money where their mouth is.  

Over the past 15 months we've been doing major renovations.