Best thing you can do is find Whole Selling Real Estate books and start reading about their strategies. 

Someone who started in auto sales and has made most of his money through book sales, education, and selling the hype.... 

I do have a lot of "roundabout" knowledge of real estate because I've listened and read many hundreds of hours' worth of financial independence podcasts and books.

However, the carpet that i'd be putting in would be standard carpet that i do in my rentals but if they wanted to use that $1000 to upgrade the carpet they could do so. 

I'd first discover that idea from a book "The richest man in Babylon."  

Much appreciated.With the collective wisdom of Bigger Pocket experts, I was trying to determine if I was missing some asset protection strategy that is standard with landlords..Thanks again!

Protecting their credit score is sufficient motivation for most high credit score tenants to play by your standard lease rules.Low income tenants are playing by different rules.

@Mike Calabrese an excellent book is Inspecting a House by Carson Dunlop and Associates. 

@Adam Anderson: You're right, vacancy rates ARE extremely low in Boston (currently hovering just over 3%), but for this very specific target you've mentioned be careful about timing - it's much, much harder to rent a 3bd unit outside the standard 9/1 rental cycle, versus 1-2bd units, in my experience.

Hello BP community, what are your favorite real estate and business books?