I found when buying property a lot of the time in the first couple months I will take care of any deferred maintenance issues and do preventative maintenance as well.

Take care!

My basic instinct tells me that it is a wiser decision to get a rental with an already stable tenant in place you can see how they take care of the property for starters and they have a history with consistent payments....a little input on this please....Thanks

These include loan payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, lawn care, and any other costs that occur during the Rehab period up until the property is fully rented. 

Dog patch is not too far, but dog patch is already $1100-1200 PSF, where Bayview and the shipyard are around $700 PSF. 

I just did a quick google search and Baltimore County requires all rentals to have hard-wired smoke detectorshttps://www.baltimorecountymd.gov/News/PoliceNews/...In addition Baltimore REIA has an article which indicates that the city requires hard-wired smoke detectors as well:http://www.baltimorereia.com/smoke-detector-law/If you read the Baltimore REIA article carefully it lays out when battery powered detectors must be upgraded to hard-wired but of course you should not solely rely on their article.

HiI have a rental I've owned for about 10 years. it's a triplex I have been a bad boy....I took the milk and did not care much for the cow. 

HiI am in an interesting situation. I have recently moved to Oshawa, ON, Canada. I will be buying a small home operated business there from a gentleman who is moving out of the city. I have proposed to buy his house a...

My family needed a place to live for ~5 years, we couldn't rent because I have lots of kids and a giant dog, and since I'm an investor, I wanted a deal with numbers and exit strategies I could be happy with. 

Sounds like the owner's family were getting payment but not taking care of anything else ... at least that is my suspicion ...