At the end of the day I feel like I am skipping a whole lot of experience by going into the hard money side of things without building my foundation first.

Time to learn skip tracing techniques, learn and refine your door knocking skills.

Having only managed SFRs up to this point, I've never had to deal with "bad" tenants, as I have always been the one screening.Cut to: One tenant that has been paying rent late every month (or skipping a payment altogether).

You can get a lot of info from the owner and save lots of time with just one phone call.I have often skipped my agent and went to the sellers agent to get info quicker.There may not be any info to get.

I'm more than comfortable skipping an inspection, however as someone who already owns a number of properties, and as an agent who is at inspections several times a month, I'm in a better position to know what I'm looking at than the laymen. 

I'd definitely make sure not to skip over anything in the screening process though.

Otherwise you can use something called skip tracing to track them down, I’ve never done this.

But it if isn't feasible with the layout, skip it.

batchskiptracing.com couldn't skip my number, my gf's number or our parents number when given a full name and address...

I would never consider skipping the deposit entirely.