Recognizing that occasionally there are items like the Great Recession that can impact your projections.  

While some states have better protections for LLCs than others, when it comes to real estate courts only want to recognize local protections.

Consider adopting realistic plan on growing your business, starting with the basics (ie. residential), and working your way up to larger and larger deals (both residential and commercial) as your network expands.I'm not saying my path to where I'm at is for everyone and again I recognize how incredibly lucky my start was but my strategies have proven to be highly efficient in terms of time/dollars spent per deal closed and I don't see why others just starting off can't follow suit.Wishing you all much success.

So as you rightly point out its a good idea to allocate a little extra for an older house, but then that gets validated or otherwise when my contracting team get in there to produce theor scope of work.Now we've done more than 100 of these deals on the same streets, we've kind of got it down to a fine art that's backed up by a proven process to validate our numbers as best as possible.My advice is... expect the unexpected, very few projects will go entirely to plan, so have some contingency funds for any overage (I budget 10% of the SoW).Good luck!

But I want them to recognize that I tried to help in a low/no cost way first...this has helped me have tenants who work with me to take care of small problems themselves with phone/text troubleshooting which they could have put on me if they wanted to just assign blame.

If the past 5 years have proven anything, it's that black swan events are inevitable - but it's essentially impossible to foresee (except in hindsight). 

I will point out, however, that it's important to recognize that what you're pursuing is also what hundreds if not thousands of other investors are looking for, SFH/2-4 unit deals that cash flow in a rapidly growing area.

We'd put 20% down if we use current home as a rental, probably double that if we sell.My gut tells me to take advantage of the current market and sell before it cools...I recognize there are signs it's already cooling.

Unless it can be proven that you as the owner was negligent, I don’t foresee anyone suing for more than you are covered for.

If you consistently analyze properties, it will be much easier to recognize a good deal when it shows up.