His advice all boils down either to treating your employees and contractors like absolute garbage in the hopes that they give you a cheap price, or repeating really asinine, useless stuff like "when you have to choose between a high price and a low price for the same work, you choose the low price!" 

Decided to ask others as I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I missed out on.I'm planning on going around looking for some abandoned or beat up houses in the surrounding cities.

Some of my stuff has been less than 200 sq feet and still met code.

While I would be cautious here given how things developed, I would think that if you have done all of the relevant background research on the original applicant and he met your criteria (3x the rent plus the stuff I mentioned above - you'll need standards so you can treat everybody the same) then it wouldn't matter if he added someone else as his income and credibility should sufficiently cover.

He's sent you some stuff to look at and zero bites from you.Basically, you've done nothing to allow him to make a commission for 2+ years.Why would you think you should be higher on his priority list?

I started my investing career in California, but the prices kept shooting up higher and I started to look elsewhere and stumbled upon Cleveland.I started out with 3 duplexes in B class areas and then worked my way up to about 70 units now in 3.5 years.I can just tell you from experience, it's scary as hell buying stuff out of state in the begging, but once you get over that first one it's no big deal.

Put in new wall, floors, plumbing and electric, basic stuff nothing fancy, around the existing foundation?

I'm finding a contractor to get the place ready to go or a handyman to fix up the stuff in the inspection report and I'm asking who knows a lender so that I can get financing.

A lot of that stuff should be able to be done by a local handy man, no need for a contractor.

I know Oregon does not really require CO's for rental properties.. but back east its a big deal in many cities and they have inspectors for this stuff..