They are still living in the house in spite of providing alternative accommodation and potentially further creating mess.

I am incredibly interested in ways to create financing.

It take a bit longer but its a way better way to invest out of state- create your own bank here (your property) and then use that money to pay in cash for stuff to BRRRR else where.

I am creating a portfolio to give to a few select loan officers to obtain a mortgage for a rental property. 

What I wrote above does not create an attorney/client relationship between us.

If you have the mindset that you are there to serve your tenant (customer), then you will be much more successful in my opinion (of course in business, sometimes you need to fire bad customers!)

Also check out build.com and overstock.com Build.com has great customer service and will try to beat Lowe’s or Home Depot on prices.  

Some companies have the day to day tenant customer service end separate from the leasing brokerage end.

My understanding is that in MA (don't know about FL) emails and texts can both be used to create binding contracts. 

We contacted an agent, got some input on neighborhoods/ places to buy, we looked on Zillow for several weeks created a list of interesting properties, talked to our agent eliminated maybe 20-25% of them, and then flew in for a long weekend.