@Chris Kay finding a quality, cost-effective contractor is extremely difficult:(There are thousands of contractors that are great talkers, but rarely perform within budget.Standard bait & switch is to lowball a bid, then once they get started all sorts of things "pop up" that somehow their bid didn't cover.

Focusing solely on numbers often leads to the purchase of low-quality properties.

Anticipate an emphasis on quality over quantity in terms of reconstruction materials and housing footprint.

Take a look at Personal Property versus Real property coverage, plus clean up costs to make sure your covered.I would also look at covering your project from the Subcontractors. 

The biggest thing to me is buying in quality areas that will increase in value over time.

And for an OOS, I always advise to keep things simple at start, don't get greedy, go for quality and consistency, then work on maximizing monetization later. 

Because Airbnb only makes money when the guest books on Airbnb.Hence, they want the price to be cheapest on their platform, so people book on Airbnb instead of elsewhere, and want their properties to be able to compete with hotel prices (even after cleaning fee and service fees). 

@Zach Howard some copy & paste advice below:)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?

Now, youre under the gun on a refi needed to finance another purchase and the loan you were counting on isnt - and never was - available to you because of an error that wasnt caught due to a lack on internal quality control.

Account Closed first, most cities in Metro Detroit have some type of rental property inspection every 2-3 years.It's not really a big deal 99% of the time - especially for owners who are NOT slumlords:)Also, a quick Google search will show that several states/cities are passing/considering similar legislation.One of the biggest mistakes we see newer investors making is NOT properly understanding Neighborhood/Property/Tenant Classes and naively assuming that any rental they buy will deliver Class A results.Read our copy & paste thoughts below and DM us if you'd like to dicuss more about the Detroit market:)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?