Promising a seller you will purchase their property with NO intention of closing if you cannot assign the contract is not an honorable way to do business.

However, the one constant in life is change.My experience is that despite good intentions, people and companies tend to lose focus and you will have to replace the property manager every few years (along with every other team member).

These tenants need to be on a M2M lease.Their history, being good tenants, is completely irrelevant to you having a no pet policy.You may want to think about how serious you are about having a lease with policies you have no intent to inforce.

Hey, Your post caught my intention as I am in a similar situation and would love to get started as early as I can.

Yes my intentions are to ethically close deals if not I will not be getting involved.

Intentional?

If the finish doesn't really require any money, I'd get on my horse - maybe take a week's vacation from work - finish it out and do whatever the intention was (flip?

The intention of the home is that half of it is to be used as a live+work environment for myself, and the other half as a vacation rental.  

It's true that you can buy more properties if you use more leverage (less down in each property), but that also means your fixed mortgage payments are higher which means you have less flexibility / breathing room if things don't go well or as expected (i.e., it's higher risk).At this stage of the market I see a lot of virtue in choosing a lower leverage (20% down) option, but again that's really a personal choice.

The reality is the opposite - if it's not in writing then the PMC doesn't have to provide the service or can charge extra for it.We have a 12 page management contract that we've added our real experiences to over the years, with the intent of protecting both us AND the landlord.