It will be slow, but if I target specific things I can measure results.  

I like to break them down into Taxes (Actual), Insurance (Actual), Maintenance (12%), Management (10%), and Capital Improvement Reserves (7%) to find your un-leveraged return as a measure of the strength of the deal, then add in mortgage expense to find your Cash-on-Cash return.

Stuff like that to measure what is successful and not.

They dug up the new driveway, dug down to the footing on the exterior of the house and pushed the wall back into place and braced for extra measure.

It's good to measure commonalities in success. 

Some banks may go more conservative to 75% to reduce their own risk however its important to know this distinction because it could be the difference between getting the loan and not especially with people who have tight DTI ratios.My second point about the above is the "self sufficiency," rule that every is mentioning is not measured by taking 85% of gross rents to meet the entire PITIA of the property if its done in the actual underwriting guidelines you take the entire gross rents of all units and compare it to the PITIA of the property if the total monthly gross rents are the same or greater then it meets the self sufficiency tests for 3-4 unit properties.Regarding the income being above being more than the PITIA or monthly total obligation, this wouldnt happen anyway atleast on owner occupied properties because income on rental property is underwritten separately and added to income while liabilities are added as an obligation you have to qualify for.

If you didn't take proper measures a judge if you go to court could say you had your "right of your own inquiry" to investigate and chose not to so you have to live with the consequences.The estoppel basically says that only what is written into the lease version you have is correct and there are no undisclosed documents written or verbal agreements to the contrary.If the tenant will not sign then you know there are undisclosed issues you need to address before you buy if at all.No legal advice given.     

Specific and measurable goals are best.  

Are the two stats measuring different things? 

Make sure that Bill has accountability measures.