My real estate agent, who has a long prior career history in construction, seems to be happy with both the properties and has inspected them in detail and also been under the crawl space noting new plumbing, electrical and foundation sister-in-law beams too.As mentioned it is looking very likely the current buyer will not meet the closing deadline at which point I am next in line and have got price agreed with the back up after a few phone calls today. 

I've worked with a few (even trained briefly as I considered a career change, but didn't make the switch), all of them have said safety was the priority. 

Some of the PMs we had were converted to "field managers" who ended up just being leasing agents with no direction to actually manage the property.Their maintenance software is even worse than their management software - with even more bugs.

The part about common sense going out the window when taxes are really high I have experienced first hand and in my prior career in tech personally did.

It is precisely because of mentoring programs that teach strategies and techniques to people who do not have any grasp of the three afore mentioned fundamentals that we have such a mess with “wholesaling” and “subject to” that governmental authorities are figuring ways to heavily regulate or outright ban these activities in the residential real estate field. 

It all depends on where you are in your investing career on whether you should optimize for loans or taxes.

I work in Field IT.

Look at common factors of other properties in the area that are getting good rents, then look for well-priced properties with the similar fields.  

I'm looking to build a spec single family, the problem is that I don't have W2 income as I'm transitioning in my career.   

It's wonderful to see your enthusiasm for this field.