@Maria Mccarthy get a detailed estimate together of what you had to do to mitigate the smell and clean the apartment.

It's those maniacs that buy homes cash via quit claim deed off of craigslist that really get screwed.Make sure your property manager is a licensed real estate brokerage.Understand you can not eliminate all risk, only mitigate it.

DST 1031 properties, however, typically have long-term financing in place, which helps to mitigate 1031 exchange closing risk.

What are issues that are consistently the biggest chunk of your rehab budgets and what solutions have you found to mitigate them?

There are a number of ways to mitigate that tight time crunch. 

This is how you mitigate risk.

The house has a few (expensive) items not to code - things like the electrical box and radon mitigation system.

It's your business and you don't deserve to be uncomfortable if you can mitigate it. 

I just hate losing my shirt if I’m over leveraged so this is my way of “mitigating risk” and still stay in the game so my stomach does not keep turning with debt!

As someone who invests out of state myself, having adequate systems in place in terms of team players and experience helped mitigate some of the risk.