Does this change our ability to deduct?  

This has elements of both turnkey and BRRR.  

Make your Team members prove their ability before cut them loose to take care of things you are responsible for.Track all of the income and expenses on projects you do in a report form and analyze them regularly with a few people you trust to help you and you might be able to cut your expenses and increase your income.

I joined last month and the ability to network face to face with local investors is sort of priceless.

I don't know about your area but in Ca theres a law called the implied warrenty of habitability in short it says that in order for you to collect rent that the rental must have running water, the ability to produce hot water plumbing trash bins pest free, electrical service heat source and so forth.

I would normally suggest you are making a mistake even doing mail over forcing ACH payments but my guess is that would assume low income = no bank account or no ability to ACH.

In reality, the investor could actually live in the property, but instead they choose to excerise their permissable ability to sublease the property and profit from the spread during the lease term.  

This means building a reputation of honesty, reliability and consistency as well as having the ability to work well with others.

You will have to be confident in your ability to resell the place for them to accept a contingency, however, or else it is not worth it to them to tie the house as pending, when they could be marketing it for sale to another buyer who is buying it directly. 

Lock the thermostat so tenants do not have ability to change temp settings as well.