Not the best customer service with most lenders (just trying to be honest)I hope this helps you Jacob and I wish you the best.

Both lists can be mixed with Absentee Owners if you don't want to put all your faith in owner occupied - and can be customized with property type and home value along with other limiting factors.

The tickets are expensive, Security sucks, nickel and dime on everything, no customer service. 

I do this for a number of data points... the data sets I find most relevant are home ownership %, median household income, % of people w/ at least a HS diploma, % of people w/ at least a bachelors degree, % of vacant housing units, and school data from some independent rating site (I personally look at niche a lot).

Or you can pull up the relevant zoning code and go through it.

Most of the time the unit/home needs to be rented to paying customers constantly to cover expenses and the mortgage.

Not to mention that marketing, customer service, property management, owner usage, etc heavily impact each property individually. 

And apparently, its enough to cause quite a bit of water in the basement.I called a "Bilco door specialist" -- those exist, apparently -- and they're saying I need a custom door replacement and the cost is $6500.

Yeah, seems relevant ;) For how to get paid, that depends on how you want to structure the deals.

You will likely find that the ones who provide the most detailed itemized bids are used to working with retail customers (homeowners) and they will likely charge higher rates.