Maybe lock the exterior door?

Going in and painting full interior and exterior of homes,  changing out fans,  lights, faucets and etc.

Generally I can get out to look at the exterior if I do a drive by but can't get to the inside until I talk to my agent.

A good plumber could tackle it in a day or two.He'll probably drill into the exterior sheathing and run it into the wall that way and then put a foam jacket around the exposed pipe rather than drill through the slab and sill plate.

The 2nd part of the answer to your question is in commercial properties, as opposed to single family homes, there's much less of an intrinsic value for the real estate and less demand for the specified uses if you lose a tenant.

But, if you want to change anything about the exterior later, you'd probably run into issues.I dealt with something similar on my personal residence last year. 

Can't get inside, but based on the exterior, I could see $10-20k in repairs.

In that case likely 25% down to buy a property as an investor.If it's a small franchisee I want to see a higher cap or 2 to 2.5% annual increases because a lender will likely want a higher DSCR and 35% down to offset risk of the less desirable guaranteed operator.If you are not willing to put in annual increases that are hefty to land the best locations then you will need to settle for the less desirable locations to structure the lease the way you want or lose out to national companies.Two opposing forces are your risk as a growing restaurant and my risk as a developer.You might or might not see restaurants as wanting to split out risk.

We're talking about "flipping around" a fireplace, "bumping an exterior wall back 5 feet", and a host of other uncommon rehab moves, so we want to make sure we're not biting off more than we can chew so to speak.

One advantage is bank financing is easier, cheaper, and requires a much lower down payment for an "owner occupied" property as opposed to a "non owner occupied property.