I meet the animals, review current vet records.No dogs/cats under 1 year of age and must be neutered/spayed.

I know a guy who prefers to rent to old people & women over younger to middle aged men, if possibleHe says the chances of a hole being punched in the drywall or a door are much lower.

Also realtors age has a lot to do with it.

Stupid-and-nothing-to-lose age.

I was born in Ukraine, but immigrated to the US with my family at the age of 5.

Even for its age the house inspected well and the numbers all made sense. 

You might be able to determine the likely area to target based on the average age of the homes built in an area and if the majority of homes haven't had permits pulled for updates, but I prefer to grid the city and drive every street. write down the potential houses, go back and look up the owners and send them mail, skip trace them for phone numbers, look them up on social media and in some way contact them.

On a related topic, I called a potential tenant's employer for salary/wage verification and was told normally they get a wage verification form from folks like me to complete.

The middle-aged mutant Ninja Monkey will tell you wats tos doos.So with little money the only thing you can do really is use that money to make a (little bit) more.So now you have $3K and a little bit more.You then use that money to make even a little bit more, but more than that previous "little bit more" you made, because you invested  that $3K+ "a little bit more".

Our goals are to have a 50/50 of equities/RE for our retirement – and to possibly build a bridge of RE income that can carry us from 50 to legal retirement age, whatever that has become by then.