While we have good facilities management, I cannot say my cleaner is the absolute best and is head and shoulders above the rest.People tend to hire us who are too busy to talk to guests, do the pricing, etc. 

I will add that the rental prices of condos tend to be more similar to multi-family housing than SFH and in the greater Phoenix MSA a lot of new multi-family units have been built in the past couple years with more on the way, so rents have softened.

I and many other investors tend to underestimate rehab expenses so it's a great idea to build in some cushion. 

Some investors thrive in this type of market knowing they will have strong equity growth as regulation tends to lead to fewer players, fewer available rentals and therefore higher prices (rents and property value).

However, houses in Mobile aren't particularly expensive so anyone that plans on staying in the area for a while tends to purchase a house instead of rent.

Honestly the high fees combined with lack of transparency and high appraisal costs, a whole month of UW (longer than normal), etc. would make me want to switch lenders right away because IME the lenders with high fees and high appraisal costs who drag their feet like this also tend to be the ones to continue delaying, have things get stuck in underwriting, say one thing while delivering another, have poor communication especially between UW and origination, bad customer service, can't close when they say they will, etc. and it can be a total nightmare. 

In my experience credit unions are more flexible and tend to be more generous with terms.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the Midwest in general offers strong rental yields compared to coastal cities, where property values tend to be much higher but returns are slimmer.As for local networking, I'd suggest tapping into local real estate meetups, the local chamber of commerce or investor groups.

The community here tends to be really supportive, so don't be afraid to reach out if you need anything.

Same goes for number of LLCs and what to fund them with, since bear in mind that CA tends to be more cumbersome and expensive to have LLCs than other states.California is generally more cumbersome than other states when it comes to taxes and filings.